


The Demon They Threw to the Wolves

by TortiQuercu



Series: Demon [9]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Adventure, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 21:44:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TortiQuercu/pseuds/TortiQuercu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hot in Morocco. Hawkeye and the Black Widow are on a simple reconnaissance mission when the parameters are suddenly and violently altered. Clintasha, some angst. This is my first crack at a multi-chapter piece, I hope you enjoy it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Demon They Threw to the Wolves

 

* * *

**Chapter 1 - Marrakech**

* * *

_"слушайте меня. Assemble the gun completely in less than thirty seconds, Natalia, if you want to eat today._

_The little girl's face was emotionless, but she cocked her head as she glanced down at the table in front of her. "But there is no barrel here."_

_"That is correct," replied the axe-faced matron. "Katerina has the barrel and will not surrender it. You must assemble the gun in less than thirty seconds. Go."_

Natasha slowly opened her eyes and listened for her own pulse, willing it to calm. The bed was hard and uncomfortable as she shifted slightly.

"Bad dream?" her partner asked from his perch by the tiny window.

"Bad memory," she replied, blinking in the relentless sunlight. "It's too damned hot to sleep anyway. What time is it?"

"Almost 4," Clint answered, turning his attention back out to the busy Marrakech street below. "No sign of hostiles, I gave the all-clear for Counsellor Dodona's arrival a couple of hours ago. His security retinue will be taking over at 20:00."

"Mmffph," she grunted in affirmation, wiping the sweat from her face. "Do you want to catch a few Z's before we pack up?"

"Nah, I'm fine. Like you said, too hot to sleep. Just need to kill a few more hours in this sandbox. Warning you now, I'm flying home with the windows open."

Natasha smiled and stood up from the bed. She had earlier stripped down to panties and a camisole, which clung appealingly to her sweat-dampened skin. She stretched up onto her tip toes and spread her sleepy limbs out widely, and her partner groaned.

"Jesus, Nat! Can you not... I mean...  _come on_. Really," he chastised her. "I thought we had an agreement about that!"

Natasha pulled her arms down and chuckled. "It was an accident, I'm sorry!"

He was shaking his head in disgust. "And in your underwear, no less. Temptress."

"Professional temptress," she corrected him, stepping towards the window.

"Hussy," he retorted, a grin appearing on his lips. "Trollop!"

"Did you swallow a thesaurus?" Natasha teased her partner.

"Shameless Jezebel," Clint replied, sticking his tongue out at her. She grinned, and he crossed his eyes.

She put her hand on his hot shoulder, and paused. "Wait a minute!" she exclaimed suddenly, gesturing at his attire. "Hypocrite!"

He gave her a sedate look. "I am in my boxers and undershirt because it's 126° in here. I am not wearing silk, stretching provocatively, or being aggressively adorable."

She rolled her eyes, and picked up her binoculars from the table beside the window. "Double standards are clearly in place, I see." She scanned the streets from behind the gauzy curtain.

"I'm your senior, I get to make the rules," he informed her casually.

She snorted in derision and picked up their duty log. "As the senior agent, then, you get to explain all these doodles," she said as she quickly flipped through the most recent pages. "Oh, I like this one!"

Clint glanced over, she was pointing at his cartoon drawing of Stark flying into a closed window. "Thanks, I am pretty proud of that one myself. I'm thinking of a series on that theme, everyone's favorite Iron Ma..."

Clint trailed off suddenly as a red light began to blink furiously on a small console at his side. He quickly started typing as Natasha jumped into action, grabbing her machine pistols from the dresser.

"Perimeter alarm," Clint grunted. "Someone coming down the hallway."

"Gun?" his partner asked as she strapped her tactical vest on.

"I'll take your Grach," he replied, and she handed him her handgun and his tac vest. A second light began to blink on the console. Natasha took up position beside the door to their tiny room, and Clint quickly pulled his vest on. Seconds later, there was a sharp knock on the wooden door.

Clint slowly put his hand on the doorknob and called out, "Muneh hun'akah?"

There was a pause, before a smooth male voice answered. "Dammit, Barton, my Arabic is rusty. Either you're asking me out for a game of tennis, or you want to know who this is. The answers are 'but I forgot my racquet' and 'Timo Vanalman'."

Clint's face relaxed into a smile and he nodded at his partner. Without lowering his gun, he pulled the door open. Standing in the hall was a grinning red-headed man, similar in height and build to Clint. He was fair and freckled, handsome in a devilish way in a light linen suit, and his hands were raised in supplication.

"Jesus, Clint, do you always answer the door in your undies?" he exclaimed.

The comment drew a laugh from Natasha, and Clint lowered his weapon. He gestured the man in, who obliged and gave Natasha a curious once-over.

"What the hell are you doing in Marrakech during a heat wave, Timo?" Clint asked as he cleared the chamber of his gun and put it back on the dresser.

"Shit, tell me about it," the man sighed. "Hey, let's send the ginger out into the desert again, watch him burn to a crisp, ha ha ha. Bah! I'm just early. I'm heading up Counsellor Dodona's security these days."

"No kidding?" Clint replied with interest. "I wondered! After they bumped you up to Level 8, bam. No trace of you."

"It's a nice change. Less rolling out of bed in the middle of the night, more cushy private jets and champagne," the man responded wryly. "So, you gonna tell me how you ended up in this hellhole in your skivvies with a Russian handgun and a lingerie model?"

Natasha was peeling off her tactical vest, and she raised her eyebrow at the stranger.

Clint chuckled. "Tash, this is Agent Timo Vanalman. He and I were in the army together, SHIELD recruited both of us outta there..."

"Hallelujah," Vanalman interrupted.

"... Timo, the gun came with the model, both are Russian. This is Agent Natasha Romanoff, my partner," Clint continued.

"Charmed," Natasha held her hand out, and Vanalman eagerly shook it.

"Partner?" Timo seemed surprised. "Damn. Never figured you'd partner up, Barton. What happened to the lone hawk routine?"

Clint managed to look somewhat abashed, and Natasha answered for him. "I'm a stray, he took me in. Daddy said he could keep me, but only if he promised to look after me himself."

"Worst mistake I've ever made," Clint muttered under his breath, and Natasha cuffed him lightly. "I mean, Tasha has a way of changing a man's mind."

"I... uhhh... I can see that," Timo replied, making an awkward hand gesture at her that suggested he didn't know where to look. Natasha smiled coyly, grabbed a t-shirt and pulled it on. She climbed onto the bed with her machine pistols and began checking the chambers.

"Most of the time, we're fully clothed," Clint supplied helpfully. "But this heat is a bit much. I got tired of wringing out my BDU's every five minutes."

Vanalman chuckled, and Clint gestured for him to take the extra chair. The men sat and Clint did a quick recon from his sniper scope. "So what's up, Timo? Why early?"

Vanalman spread his hands. "No reason, really. I heard it was you that called in the all-clear and I thought I'd drop in ahead of time and we could catch up. I didn't realize you were a duet now."

"Strike Team Delta," Clint nodded. "Highest success rate for the last four years." His voice had an undisguised note of pride.

"Wow," Vanalman said appreciatively. "I'm surprised they don't have  _you_  babysitting counsellors and swilling champagne, too."

Natasha paused almost imperceptibly as she was cleaning her guns, but Clint noticed as obviously as if she had thrown her precious Pernachs out the window. He pursed his lips. "I can't say they haven't asked."

"Too proud to live the good life?" Timo smiled.

"Too happy where I am, actually," he replied softly, looking at his partner. She was pretending she wasn't listening, and didn't meet his gaze.

"Ahhh," Timo nodded. "Russian, you said? SVR? GRU? FSB?" he named several Russian intelligence services.

Natasha's head snapped up. "None of the above," she replied with fire in her eyes. "Ex-Red Room.  _Very_  ex."

Vanalman's eyes widened. "Holy shit," he said after a pause.

"Indeed," she agreed. "I told you, I was a stray."

Clint's old friend shook his head slowly. "You always did know how to pick 'em, Barton," he said lazily.

"It's a natural talent," Clint replied with a grin.

Vanalman ran his hand through his short-cropped hair. "It's something, all right, buddy," he agreed. "And it really doesn't give me any options. I'm sorry."

Natasha tensed instantly at the change in his tone, and was already pulling one of her Pernachs up towards Vanalman when he pulled the trigger on the gun he suddenly had trained on her. Two shots, center of mass, and she collapsed back down onto the bed as blood gushed from her chest.

Clint shouted hoarsely, scrambling to grab his gun. Timo had already reached out to him, a small metal tube in his off-hand, and it discharged a stunning current of electricity as it came in contact with Clint's shoulder. Clint screamed as his muscles contracted painfully.

Timo quickly pulled several sets of handcuffs from his linen jacket and restrained the archer even as he continued to spasm. "Jesus, Clint," Timo gasped. "I'm so sorry, I swear to God. I had no idea you weren't alone, I just assumed. I didn't know about your partner..." Vanalman glanced at her, unmoving on the bed, and shuddered.

Clint hissed angrily between clenched teeth. "Gonna... k...kill... you...Ti..mo.." he ground out to his old friend.

Vanalman gave him a look of despair. "Clint, I swear to you, I wasn't expecting this. But Red Room? I had no choice. I couldn't zap you both and she could probably kill me just by looking. I'm so sorry."

Clint was growling and spitting blood, likely from biting his tongue during the shock. He began rocking and jerking the chair around, trying to get a view of his partner. "N..Na..tasha!" he cried jerkily.

"No, no," Timo begged, pulling the manacled archer back. "Just leave it, Barton, leave her. You can't help. Please, Barton, don't make me shoot you too." He grabbed Clint's jaw and tilted his head up to meet his eyes. Clint screamed loudly in frustration.

"Clint, please listen," his old friend pleaded. "I had to do this, you don't understand. If only you'd seen the... the corruption I have. The decadence," he explained, his voice rising. "You have no idea. The counsellors, they control us... all of us... they make decisions they claim are for the good of mankind. But it's a lie, Barton. They follow no code but the drive to preserve their own fortunes. We're all just puppets. I couldn't take it any more. I have a plan..."

Clint wasn't listening, he was pulling desperately at his bonds, at Timo's grasp on his chin and the chair, trying to see beyond him to the bed.

Timo sighed, and reached into his jacket for his cellphone. As he swiftly dialed, Clint began shouting broken obscenities at him. Timo frowned, but spoke assertively. "This is Vanalman. The destination is NOT secure, I repeat, not secure. Fortify Dodona immediately and initiate a counter-insurgency assault." He paused, giving one last regretful look at the raging archer. "Deploy maximum force to the destination."

* * *

**Chapter 2 - Blood**

* * *

_She was small for seven years old, but this was a good thing. It meant that she could crawl through smaller vents, that her nimble little fingers could reach through smaller bars and pick more intricate locks. She was faster and more agile but no less tougher for her size. Katerina sneered at her from across the room. "ребенок," the bigger girl scoffed. Baby. Natalia's bright green eyes hardened to agate. Baby wanted her barrel back._

Clotting agents. Endorphins. Fibroblasts. Antibiotics. Catalase. TGF beta proteins. The cocktail known colloquially as "the serum" by the agents of the Red Room was barely half identified and not even close to understood by SHIELD's scientists. The infusion process that had permanently altered Natasha's physiology had been long, painful and irreversible. However, the changes wrought by the potent elixir had kicked in the second Vanalman's bullets had pierced her chest. With wounds that were clearly lethal, her body quickly went to work.

It hurt to breathe. More than that... it burned a white-hot fire every time she tried to pull in a gasp of air. She swam around the edge of consciousness, unable to get enough oxygen, her brain screaming with the need for it. After an eternity, somehow her lungs began to fill, and the blackness ebbed. Up and down, they moved like crackling bellows. Breath in, up. Breath out, down. The fire continued to burn, but she was able to grapple with it as she came closer to the surface of wakefulness.

Her heart, was it beating? She wasn't sure. There was blood in her lungs, pooling, unmoving. Was she dying, the blood in her lungs laying stagnant? As she became aware of it, it began to choke her. The heavy, unmoving blood was burning her lungs and suffocating her. "Fight!" her brain shrieked, and she lashed out with every ounce of strength she could conjure, kicking and flailing, pushing against the darkness and the fire and the smothering blood in her lungs.

She hit something, hard, felt an impact that tore the return of the air completely from her. She coughed, so painfully without any breath behind it, feeling the vacuum of her empty lungs as they spasmed. Her eyes flew open and now she was paralyzed by the light, blinded and choking and fighting with her entire being. Something pressed against her, tried to stop her as she convulsed. She struggled against it, coughing and wheezing frantically, until thick, strangling chunks of blood began to move up her throat. She fought as her body spat them out, she cried as they made wet, tearing sounds as she heaved the clots onto the bedspread. The pressure pushing against her shifted, it began to pull at her and she allowed it to, she was out of strength. She shuddered and coughed and sobbed at the burning pain while she was moved, first on to her side then her knees pushed up slightly. A second eternity passed this way before the shuddering and choking slowed, and her painful gasps seemed to be bringing in air on their own. Alive. She was still alive.

"Ahzzaahaa."

She heard... something. It was faint and echoing, as though it was at the end of a long tunnel. She tilted her jaw against the wet sheets and tried to move closer to the sound. She whimpered softly, unable to stop from crying. Something warm and rough settled itself on her back. Without knowing why, it calmed her, and she tried to focus on it. It was hot where she was cold, it moved slowly over her back where she was paralyzed, it was firm and solid where she was certain she was nothing more than broken, floating pieces.

"Natasha."

She cried anew. She tried to answer, but her throat closed in pain. Instead, she raised an arm, she wasn't even sure which one. The warm and rough pressure closed around it gently, and with great care it turned her over. It was so bright that she winced, but something eventually came into focus. Someone. Clint. His face, hovering over her, framed in the bright light of a thousand haloes.

"Oh my God, Natasha," his lips moved, the sound came to her oddly disconnected. "Oh God, thank you. You're alive. It's okay, firecracker, you're going to be okay. You're alive."

Was she? She tried to smile, blood dribbling slowly out of the corners of her mouth. "Are you... sure?" she croaked, feeling mildly proud to have made audible sounds this time.

He released a deep breath culminating in a short, nervous laugh. He said nothing but smiled at her and brushed errant strands of red hair from her face. She smiled back, weakly raising her hand to his arm and gazing at his face and...

"What happened to you?" she murmured faintly, realizing that his face and arms were covered in blood.

"You did," he replied softly. "Tash, do you remember what happened? Timo's gone rogue, he shot you. You... I thought you were dead," his voice wavered.

"I was dead," she repeated. "I was. Yes."

He bit his lower lip, and that was when she noticed the tears on his cheeks, tracking down through the blood. She slowly touched his face. "Blood," she mumbled.

"It's yours," he said. "CPR, artificial respiration... I... I.. couldn't lose you," he stammered. "I didn't stop until you began choking up blood on me."

"You brought me back," she whispered, tracing the trail of tears down his face. "Thank you."

He softly grasped her hand and pulled it away from his face. She closed her eyes as he grasped her hand in both of his. "No, you did it. You're supernatural, Tasha."

She smiled in response, until she noticed he  _was_  wounded. "Your wrists?" she asked slowly.

Clint's face hardened. "Timo. He subdued and handcuffed me before he took off. You were on the bed and I couldn't get to you..." he faltered. "I just had to get out of the cuffs." His voice was dry and he cleared his throat. "Okay, well. Obviously we have a situation here. You need an evac and the shit has hit the fan for Dodona's arrival."

"What time is it?" Natasha asked, slowly pulling herself to a sitting position, wincing at the pain.

"17:20."

"Less than three hours until the counsellor arrives, then?"

"Yes," Clint shook his head. "But Timo is calling the shots. Dodona's retinue is coming in at full-force and they think we are insurgents. I don't know what he is planning but Timo will have a small army after us... and Dodona is at risk."

"Barton," his partner murmured. "You can't take on an entire conciliar retinue by yourself. We've got to get out of here before then."

"They are sure to have upped the schedule," he replied. "I'm getting  _you_  somewhere safe and then I'll figure the rest out. Timo destroyed the computer and radio so I'll have to come up with Plan B."

"Call Coulson's cell collect?"

"Something like that, yeah," Clint nodded. "But you are the priority."

Natasha looked down at her shirt, soaked dark red with blood, and slowly raised her head back to her partner. "Barton... I don't think that's a goo..."

"Shut up," he said sharply, startling her. He stood up from the bed quickly and rubbed the tear stains from his face with the back of his bloody hand. "I am the senior agent present and I have designated you as the mission priority, is that clear, Agent Romanoff?"

"Barton," she responded reluctantly. "Clint. Listen to yourself. You're... you're compromised, Clint."

His face went stormy. "Yes," he replied through gritted teeth. "Yes, you're right. I am. One of my oldest friends betrayed me and shot my partner. You'd better believe I'm compromised. I'm on the fucking warpath now. Timo will die for this."

Natasha said nothing, her lips in a tight line. She gazed motionlessly at him, her eyes asking a dozen questions.

"He killed you, Tash," Clint accused. He dropped to his knees beside the bed and wrapped his arms around her. He gently pulled her close to him, and buried his face in her tousled hair. She cautiously wound her arms around his waist and pressed her face into his chest. "There is nothing else that anyone could ever do to hurt me more, firecracker," he whispered.

She blinked back tears and tightened her embrace around him to the very edge of the pain she could stand. "I know," she whispered back. "I know... because you are the same to me. I understand. Timo dies."

* * *

**Chapter 3 - Metaphor**

* * *

_Analysis. Speed was critical. Aim for the chin or sides of the jaw to create the maximum head-shaking effect key to a quick knock-out. Once the throat is exposed, a straight-finger jab to the windpipe will negate the protection offered by the sternomastoid muscles of the neck. A gag-reflex will be triggered. Best case scenario: trachea will be crushed. "Я не буду скучать по вам, когда вы мертвы," Natalia informed Katerina without emotion. I will not miss you when you are dead._

Clint rummaged through his duffel bag, pulling out a bulky medical kit. He gave his partner a critical look. "Did both bullets go through and through? Too much blood for me to tell."

"I... I don't think so. I'm not sure."

Clint grimaced, and sat down on the bed beside her. "Well, better have a look, I guess." He fetched a small pair of scissors from the medical kit. "You know, there are easier ways to persuade me to take your top off," he commented dryly as he started cutting the t-shirt up from its blood-soaked hem.

She smiled wanly at him. "Jokes on you," she replied quietly. "It's your shirt."

He paused, staring at the fabric. "Dammit!" he exclaimed. "And it's my Artist Former Known as Prince t-shirt, too. This is irreplaceable, you know. Since he got his name back and everything now."

"I'll find you another one on eBay," Tasha teased him.

"It's okay," he pouted, pulling the fabric carefully from her torso. "I blame Timo. You can bleed all over my favorite clothes any day." He poured some wound irrigant onto a handful of gauze and delicately dabbed at her chest and back. She hissed when he probed her injuries. "Sorry," he mumbled, taking a close look at the wounds. "Well, good news and bad news. Good news is that your crazy mutant superpowers of healing seem to be closing these bullet holes up pretty nicely. Man, it's freaky, really."

"Thanks, Barton," his partner drawled, wincing. "And what's the bad news?"

"Only one exit wound," he sighed, running his hand lightly across her naked back. "I can feel the second bullet sitting on the costal cartilage of your fifth rib. I can bandage you up, I suppose, and we hope for the best..."

Natasha raised her hand to his shoulder, and squeezed him firmly. "No good. We both know that a bullet rattling around my lungs while we're on the run is nothing more than a ticking time bomb." Clint's face was grim. "Come on, you can do this. My body is probably trying to push it out already anyway. It's probably right under the surface... right?"

Clint stood up abruptly and tore his duffel bag back open, rifling dramatically through the contents. "Geez, would you look at that?" he declared in false surprise. "I forgot to pack my surgery room! Curses!" He pulled out his small tube of toothpaste and waved it at her. "I also seem to be running low on sevoflurane... maybe I can use my Colgate as a general anesthetic instead!"

Natasha said nothing, watching him calmly from the bed. She knew she was right, and that Clint knew it too. Their options were limited. Experience, however, had taught her that it was best to allow her partner to come to the obvious conclusion on his own.

"Oh, you know what? I have a great idea!" he exclaimed, smacking his forehead with the palm of his hand. "How about, I open your chest up again with a pen knife, and you can bleed to death! It'll be a great way to wrap up this sweltering vacation!" He spread his arms out. "I'll treasure the memories forever!"

Natasha raised an eyebrow. "Are you finished yet?" she asked him after a few moments.

He stared down at her, his hands on his hips now in a defiant gesture. "No," he snapped. "No, I'm not. I'm going to rip Timo apart with my bare hands, and I'm hot, and I'm hungry, and I'm angry at you because you scared me to  _death_  with your dying and you're sitting there all... all...  _alive_ , and you're right! You're right that I have to cut a bullet out of you and I hate it. I hate everything. Except the part where you're pretty much naked right now. That part is okay. It could be better, I suppose. If there was less blood... I mean, I'm not complaining, really..." he trailed off as his partner began to smirk at him.

He smiled back at her, unexpectedly shyly, and knelt down beside the bed. "I'm scared, firecracker. I'm gonna hurt you, maybe worse."

"We'll go slow," she assured him. "I'll be fine. You've dug bullets out of me before, Clint."

"Never like this, Tash."

She leaned into him, touching their foreheads together, and they both closed their eyes. "You know I trust you, right?" she said softly.

"Yeah but we both know that you are a notoriously bad judge of character," he replied. "I mean look at you... still hanging around with that pathetic partner, after all these years. And what's he's done for you, lately? Got you shot."

"But I like him," she said softly. She opened her eyes and found him staring right back at her.

"You just proved my point," he breathed.

Her eyes flickered down to his lips, only a couple of inches from hers, and he blushed. He quickly pulled back. "Okay, let's get this party started before you ravish me with your eyes," he sighed.

"Use my good knife," she suggested.

He grunted affirmatively as he stood. "The good knife, check. Irrisept, gloves, forceps, sutures, gauze... do you want the dilaudid?"

She shook her head. "No, we need to get moving quick and I can't afford to be groggy. Just gimme some codeine and go for it."

She laid back on the ruined sheets and closed her eyes, listening to the sounds her partner made during his preparations. The clinking of ampoules, water running in the dingy sink, his soft cussing as he muttered to himself. She smiled inwardly. How far she had come, she thought to herself, from the near-feral killing machine he had brought back to SHIELD years ago. Older now, wiser for certain... even still, it amazed her that she really  _did_  trust this man. She trusted him in action, of course, but he was a soldier. More than that, though, she trusted him now, while she was vulnerable. Here, in the insufferable heat, inches from death and literally naked, something began to dawn on her.

"Clint?" she asked in a soft and curious tone. "How would you define love?"

He looked at her as though she was crazy. "Love is for children, Nat. That's what you've told me before, anyway."

"I know how I define it," she protested. "I'm asking what  _you_  think it is."

His face was inscrutable. He came back over to the bed, his gloved hand outstretched, holding a syringe. "Arm," he said gruffly, and she bared her wrist. He considered her words as he slowly injected the content of the needle into one of her veins. "Love is pain," he said finally.

Her face turned downcast. "Why?" she asked.

He withdrew the syringe and rubbed her wrist briskly. "You know why, Natasha," he answered. He reached for the clear plastic bottle of Irrisept, and squeezed a considerable fountain of it across her bare chest. As it trickled down her sides, he swabbed the area around the bullet wounds with a chunk of gauze. "It's a tool, right? A weapon. A way to manipulate people."

She chewed her lower lip. "What about before you met me? What would you have said then?"

He huffed noisily. "This is a dumb conversation. This is going to hurt, by the way." He nudged as gently as he could around her rib cage. "Bullet must have bounced off your sternum..."

"Barton," she interrupted. "You've got your fingers in my chest cavity. Humor me, for God's sake. Did I... ruin love?"

He grimaced at her. "Don't be ridiculous." He picked up the knife and hovered over her for several moments. "So love is like your knife, right? It's your weapon. You're going to use it to cut something bad out of someone. Like information. Like a bullet. Imagine, though, what it's like for the person you're cutting." Holding her steady with his free hand, Clint pressed the point of the blade down beside her breastbone.

Natasha bit back a cry and clenched her eyes shut.

"Don't move, unless you aren't using your aorta anymore," Clint told her firmly. "So for that guy, love is pain."

Natasha's entire body was tensed up, her teeth clenched, unable to reply. It seemed to go on forever, but in reality only a few seconds passed before Clint put the knife down and switched to the forceps. "It doesn't really matter what love was before that moment. All he knows about it now is how much it hurts."

"I.. I never did... that to.. you," his partner gasped out her words as he carefully twisted the forceps under her skin.

"This is a hypothetical guy, Romanova," he reminded her. With a triumphant hoot, he pulled the forceps back and quickly covered the wound with gauze. He grinned and brandished his prize near her face: the forceps held a rather jagged, flattened bullet. "Maybe you didn't take a knife to him, Tasha. Maybe he's just a guy who  _wants_  to get stabbed."

* * *

**Chapter 4 - Priorities**

* * *

_Having determined the most advantageous course, Natalia literally leapt into action. In less than two seconds, she was in front of the older girl. Katerina was already on guard, but several quick feints from her tiny adversary left her off-balance. Like water flowing over rocks, Natalia moved smoothly through her paces. A deceptively powerful blow to the chin was immediately followed by a sharp jab to the windpipe. Katerina crumpled like a paper doll, gurgling strangely. Wasting no time, Natalia bent down and pulled the gun barrel from her opponent's pocket, and ran back to the work table. Her little hands were a blur assembling the weapon. Matron clicked the stopwatch. 22 seconds. Natalia would eat today._

After the bandages went on, he helped her into her SHIELD suit. It was hotter than hell, but the stiffness of the leather made her feel more secure, like perhaps she wasn't going to fly apart in the next moment. Clint, however, was still suffocating in the heat. He pulled his tactical vest on over his undershirt, silently daring her to laugh at him.

They hadn't spoken since he dressed her bullet wounds. He had turned rather glum, and she had no idea what to say. She stretched experimentally, cringing slightly but satisfied with her range of motion. He watched her without comment.

Natasha pondered her options as she strapped her holsters on. They needed time, they needed a plan, they needed to talk... on more than one front. They'd had enough of a roller coaster already today, though; it seemed safest to start with the mission.

"How do you want to play this?" she asked, her tone purely business.

Her partner was pulling on his pants. "Let's call it out by the numbers. Objective number one, you. Assume the extraction point is compromised. We find an alternate exit strategy and we play it cautiously. We stay low and go. You set the pace, and when in doubt, we stop. Got it?" He grabbed up his quiver and bow.

Her lips were a thin line, but she nodded curtly.

"Number two, Dodona. The counsellor is at risk with his security chief gone rogue. I don't know what Timo's agenda is, but I don't need to. All I have to do is keep Dodona alive. Objective number three. Timo." Clint's grip on his bow tightened until his knuckles were white.

"I'm only going to say this once," Natasha spoke softly. "But he should be captured alive and interrogated. Whatever his agenda is, it likely goes deeper than just him and we put the entire council in jeopardy by throwing away our single source of information."

Clint picked up his bag and slung it across his back. "Noted. Glad we're only going over that once."

"I'm not going to pretend I don't want him dead, Clint. I do. Just... just try to remember the big picture, okay? Please?"

He didn't respond, picking her machine guns up from the bed and holding them out to her. She calmly holstered both of them, trusting that the message was received.

"18:35," he checked his watch. "It's a safe bet we've already got guns out there for us. We need to clear out now. Recommendations?"

"Remember Sana'a?"

He nodded. "Balcony to balcony? You okay for a bit of climbing?"

Natasha gave him the brightest smile she could manage. "Just try to keep up, Barton." She snagged her Grach handgun off the dresser and looked around the room she had died in one final time. "Let's go."

They proceeded stealthily through dimly lit corridors, several floors down to a small and quiet terrace a few stories from the ground. They hovered in the shadows as they surveyed their surroundings.

"How are you feeling?" Clint checked in with his partner, mentally noting that he'd never seen her so pale before.

"Better than expected," she replied. "We can pick up the pace. There is a sniper on the roof two buildings down. What are the odds he's a tourist?"

"A little evening skeet shooting, why not?"

"He's in for a nasty surprise when he realizes you're a hawk, not a pigeon," she joked, and he gave her a funny look. "...what?"

"That was bizarrely complimentary, Romanova," he smiled. He pursed his lips. "I feel bad taking him out from here. There's no way the whole retinue are turn-coats, my gut says Timo's team is clean. Non-lethal force wherever possible."

"Oh, great," she replied. "Now I get to do all the work."

"Hey, you said you wanted to pick up the pace, firecracker. Besides, I'm fresh out of 'tickle the bad guy until he faints' arrows."

She snorted. "Fine. Give the lady a boost, then." She put her hands on his shoulders. In one single motion, she bounced into his hands and he effortlessly tossed her up towards the side of the neighboring apartments. She propelled off the sandstone, back towards their building, and flawlessly kick-flipped off the wall over onto the roof next door. She landed already in a sprint, and was gone before he could blink twice.

Immediately, his brain was in overdrive. She was pushing too hard, she wasn't telling him the truth. Less than two hours ago, she was bleeding to death in his arms and he was breathing for her. How many sutures was she pulling out right now? Why did he think she should be scampering up buildings to confront gunmen head on?

Right at the instant panic seized him, her tousled red head appeared over the rooftop above him. "Hey hotshot," she called down, "did you miss me?"

Oh, right. He thought she should do it because she  _could_. She was Natasha Romanoff. He rolled his eyes at her, and she beamed down at him. Skillfully, she hopped from the roof down onto a balcony and had climbed back down to the terrace in seconds.

"Nice work, Tash."

"The uniform confused the hell out of him. Timo didn't mention that his 'insurgents' were flying SHIELD colors."

"Good, maybe that will buy us some breathing room."

"That would be nice, because we need to get moving. They are rolling up a machine gun across the street," she pointed down the block.

"Dammit!" Clint exclaimed, and they quickly scampered down to street level via the next door balconies.

With the big guns coming out, they seemed to agree they had no time to waste. In perfect unison, Hawkeye and the Black Widow advanced down the narrow alley. Without warning, Natasha began to run towards the building she pointed out previously. Clint stayed in the shadow, constantly scanning the area in case her had to provide cover. Without a word, he pulled five arrows from his quiver simultaneously and knocked them onto his bow. Natasha didn't slow down as she approached the wall, but barely a heartbeat before impact, she leapt up into the air. At the apogee of her jump, the archer released his arrows and they shot into the wall right at the very instant that his partner descended. She ran up what was suddenly a perfect arrow staircase without any hesitation, flipping up onto the roof smoothly. In the blink of an eye, she had dispatched the machine gun crew with silent efficiency. From the height of the roof, she scanned the area quickly before jumping over the side. She grabbed the top arrow and circled it as though performing a grand rotation on uneven bars. She dropped to the next arrow while pulling out the first one, and when her feet landed back on the ground, she was holding all five arrows out to Clint.

"Show-off," was what Clint meant to say. When he saw her shining green eyes and flushed cheeks, her lips curled into an elated grin, however, that wasn't what came out when he opened his mouth. "You are fucking amazing," he burst out.

They both seemed surprised by his words. Flush with adrenaline and endorphins, Natasha's next action could only be described as reckless. Ignoring the burning in her chest, she grabbed the straps of his tactical vest and pulled him sharply towards her. His exclamation of shock was smothered as she mashed her lips up against his. He was off-balance in every way possible: falling against her fists, unsure where to put his arrows, his head swimming with want and need but not understanding what she was doing, and his entire being drowning in the hunger and desperation of her mouth. The pit of his stomach clenched with desire, steadying him, and suddenly he was giving as good as he got.

Natasha was completely overpowered by yearning for her own partner. She roughly pushed him up towards the sandstone wall without breaking their kiss, unable to bear the aching thought of ever letting him go. She pressed up against him even as she pulled him closer, she wanted to tangle her hands in his sandy blond hair but wasn't able to untangle them from his vest, she wanted to kiss him breathless at the same time that all the words that had been dammed up inside her wanted to pour out. She unconsciously telegraphed all of these dilemmas to her partner, and with great reluctance, he grabbed her hands from his chest and broke away from her lips.

"I'll be honest," he gasped, his voice rough. "I'm not sure if you're kissing or attacking me. I've gotta say that I'm enjoying the hell out of it either way, but maybe it should be clear for the record... is this you stabbing that hypothetical guy with your knife?"

Natasha was breathing hard. "You can be such an idiot, sometimes, Barton," she despaired. "We're in crappy cover and it's sheer luck that we don't have civilians all over us, and you want me to clarify my motives for wanting you so badly it hurts?"

"I want you to tell me why you asked about love earlier," he replied, his eyes widening. So much for steering them back on track.

"I dunno," she sighed, sounding rather exasperated. "Death-bed regrets? I have no idea how this is supposed to work, Clinton! I know it's convenient to bash it into a metaphor and talk about love like it's just another weapon in my arsenal, but I think at that point we really just mean sex, don't we? I've spent my whole life confusing the two and it honestly hadn't occurred to me there was a difference until now."

He was staring at her as though she had just announced her intention to retire from espionage and take up competitive flower arranging.

"And I hate to ruin the mood,  _trust me_ , because I was really enjoying that, I think we should probably haul some ass. I'm holding up surprisingly well and we should make a play for Dodona together. We can bicker about our feelings later, okay?"

"Promises, promises," he muttered, finally jabbing his arrows back into his quiver. "But okay. If you're sure you're not about to peg out on me..."

"I'm sure," she interrupted.

"Alright, then. Let's go catch ourselves a counsellor."

* * *

**Chapter 5 - Frying Pan to Fire**

* * *

_The stack of old wooden crates crashed down to the loft floor, causing the old barn to creak and shake. The little boy who had been adventurously climbing the boxes came tumbling down with them. He landed flat on his back, winded._

_"Clint, are you okay?" his stunned friend called out in a cloud of dust and hay._

_"Yeah," Clint replied from the ground. "Oooof. I hurt my butt." He stood up, rubbing his rear-end. "Andy, look! One of the crates broke open!"_

_They scampered over to the broken crate. "WHOA!" they exclaimed simultaneously, setting their eyes on the most fabulous treasure that two young Iowan boys could ever stumble upon: a beautiful pair of metal BB rifles and no adults around._

They forged a labyrinthine path to towards the Counsellor's safe-house, an upper-class manor house just beyond the Souk they had been camped above for a week. They were trying to dodge and avoid security retinue agents wherever possible, but had been forced to kill several of them as they approached the busy market district, and Clint was grumbling. He had received two deep knife cuts during their last encounter, and Natasha insisted they pause briefly so she could dress them. She stole a long-sleeved  _jellaba_  and some shirts from a laundry line and pick-pocketed a cell phone before they ducked into an empty courtyard.

"This is a potential blood bath," he sulked as she ripped up a shirt. "There has gotta be a way to convince these security guys that we're not on the other team."

"Too bad we don't have a club handshake. Or a secret codeword." his partner commented dryly as she knotted strips of fabric around his bicep. He glared at her, unamused.

Natasha tossed the  _jellaba_  at him. "Put this on, you're going to draw too much attention in your tac vest. Coulson might just have the secret codeword we need, I'll call it in and let him know Dodona's security chief up and backstabbed us."

"He didn't backstab, he front-shot!" Clint protested. "That's a least ten times worse. I'm going to gut him. Slowly. With your less-than-good knife."

Natasha smirked at him as she deftly requested an international collect call in Arabic. Moments later, she was speaking to Agent Coulson and gave him an abbreviated rundown of their situation.

Clint grimaced throughout her recitation until he couldn't take any more. "Gimme the phone," he fussed, grabbing the cell away from her. She gave him a dangerous look but said nothing.

"She's white-washing our shitty day, Coulson," Clint complained into the phone. "Timo shot her twice and tazed me, and now he's on the loose... no, I don't know. He may be back with the counsellor and Dodona is in trouble... yeah, it's possible. Can you get a secure message to the counsellor?... right, yeah, gotcha... She's hanging in there. Of course she played it down, what do you expect? It was bad, Phil. Really bad."

Natasha growled at her partner. "Okay, you give me that cellphone back if you ever want to walk again, Barton," she hissed at him.

He raised his left arm up in a keep-away gesture. "Look, Coulson, just do whatever you have to do to get through to Dodona, okay? Tash and I will proceed to the safe house and see what our options are. Will contact you when able... yeah, will do. Thanks."

"You are an ass," she snarled, glaring at her partner. "It wasn't necessary to get Phil all worried like that."

"He needs to know the score, Nat," Clint shrugged. "It's his job to worry about us. I need him to be ready if I gotta call for help."

She opened her mouth to argue, but paused when she saw a brief flash of something raw and painful flash across his face. She exhaled loudly instead. "Fine. If it makes you feel any better, I hurt like hell but I think I'm breathing okay. I'm feeling kinda shock-y, probably blood loss, but I'm still good to go. Satisfied?"

His expression was unfathomable. "Yes, actually. Thank you." He reached out and took her hand, giving it a light squeeze. "Coulson is going to try to get through to Dodona, but he warned that with the counsellor in a security lockdown, we have no way of knowing who is receiving the message. Timo will have thought of that. There are some high-level emergency protocols Coulson might be able to tap into, he's checking with Fury. No guarantees."

"So we proceed unchanged."

"Affirmative. Dodona will have been moved into Riad Mimoun by now so we head there. Security is going to be impressive during a lockdown. We surveil and determine whether or not Vanalman is there. Based on that, we figure something out. Clear?"

"Got it. Let's get moving, we've been stationary too long. We should double-back and go right into the Souk, we can hide in the crowds."

"Fair enough," Clint replied, pulling the stolen  _jellaba_  over his head and drawing up its hood. "But we'll need to find something boring, formless and nondescript for you to wear on the way, too. I can't have  _all_  the fun with fashion."

The Souks of Marrakech were loud, colourful, maze-like bazaars absolutely teeming with life. They had originally been separated by the wares they sold, and while modern times had brought some overlapping of the shops, they were still by and large divided by theme. Now wearing local garments, Natasha and Clint slipped neatly into the Souk el Attarine: the perfume and spices district. It almost seemed possible to physically hide in the smells here, clouds of ginger, turmeric, and saffron swirled with attar of roses and aromatic frankincense resin.

"Damn, " Natasha uttered  _sotto voce_  to her partner. "If we weren't in mortal peril, I would definitely be investigating that argan oil stall."

"What the hell is argan oil?" he whispered.

"I use it on my hair," she replied, sighing as they continued briskly. "Cosmetics are a business expense for me, you know."

"My mind, it boggles."

"Well rein it in, Barton. Two burly men, suspiciously attired, up ahead, just past that cluster of men in turbans watching the snake charmer."

"Oooh, is he really charming snakes?"

"No, he's charming tourists out of their dirhams, actually. But with snakes."

"Neat. I love snakes. Okay, they haven't seen us. Into the coffee shop, go," he steered her suddenly towards a small doorway on their right. They stepped down into cramped and smoky café, where a young server waved them to a tiny table near the entrance. They ignored him, moving quickly across the room and into the kitchen alcove at the back, earning several annoyed shouts from the Berber shopkeeper.

"Le café cassis était merveilleux, merci," Clint complimented him grandiosely as they pushed out the back door. No one followed.

As they exploded into the quiet alley, Clint realized that his partner was trying rather unsuccessfully to stifle a significant wheeze. He evaluated their position in the blink of an eye, grabbed her elbow and gently pulled her down until they were both sitting on the cobblestone. "Tash, are you okay?"

She looked at him, somewhat bewildered by the noises she herself was making. "I...I...I don't..." she suddenly realized it was too difficult to breathe and talk simultaneously.

Clint watched in alarm. "Okay, noooow you're turning blue on me." He dragged her into his lap, pulled her pilfered  _mulhafa_  garment open and loosened the zipper on her leather suit. "Come on, firecracker," he coaxed, trying to stay calm for her benefit as she struggled to get enough air.

"Too... much.. smoke," she gasped out, and he nodded. A smoky café in the perfume district, in retrospect, was probably not the best bolt-hole for someone with impaired lungs.

"So help me God, Tasha, I  _will_  give you mouth-to-mouth if necessary," he joked, earning a faint but quirky smile. Her colour was improving in the faint breeze but he was still nervous.

"Just need a minute... of fresh air," she gulped as she tried to project some confidence. Given that her head was in her partner's lap and his worried face was bowed over her, it was a difficult proposition. She mentally sighed, and closed her eyes. Here she was again... literally in the arms of the only man she'd ever trust in such a scenario. When had that internal switch been flipped? At what point had her subconscious decided, "Him. I trust him with my life." It had snuck up upon her, unawares... it was a first for the Black Widow.

"Clinton," she whispered very softly, so softly that fear shot through him and he bent his face right down to her lips.

"What is it, Natalia?" his voice wavered slightly.

Her emerald eyes opened and scanned his care-worn face. "It's too hot," she murmured. "Let's finish this stupid mission and go home."

The grin that split his face made her stomach flutter in an unfamiliar way. He carefully helped her up and re-arranged the folds of her  _mulhafa._ She squeezed his hand in assurance, and they crept out of the alley together.

"Okay," he gathered his bearings, "we're just off the Souk Semmarine, so the Riad Mimoun compound is just a couple of..."

"Clint," she hissed, clutching at his arm. "There is an operative sitting outside a shop up ahead, he's dressed like a local. He's not."

"Recognize him?"

"Yes," she replied, her mouth going dry. "He's Russian, though." She swore in her native tongue. "Why is  _he_  here?"

Clint's blood ran cold. "...Russian?"

"Yes. As in, Red Room."

* * *

**Chapter 6 - Amalou**

* * *

_Andy lifted one of the rifles from the broken crate with great reverence. "Look!" he whispered, pointing at the wooden stock. Burned into the butt was a star with the name "Buzz Barton" scrolled through it. The boys stared. Slowly, Andy held the rifle out to his friend. "It's a sign," breathed. "It's meant to be yours, Clint."_

Time stood still. Natasha was still speaking, but her words drowned in the general hum of the bazaar. Clint's mind raced, trying to connect dots and fight off the rising emotion that threatened to derail him. He had plenty of reason to hate and fear the organization that had once controlled his partner, but to see one of them here now was more than troubling.

"Clint," Natasha said firmly, pulling him out of his reverie. "Move!" She shoved him in the opposite direction from the Russian agent. They briskly moved away from the block, stopping only as they came across a spice merchant's well-sheltered stall.

Clint picked up a small glass vial of saffron with half-feigned interest. "Sorry about that," he muttered. "Just trying to put the puzzle pieces together."

"It does seem dangerously coincidental," his partner replied drily. She leaned over a large bowl full of an aromatic brown paste. "What  _is_  this? It smells incredible." The stall owner noted her interest, chattering at her in an unfamiliar language.

Clint frowned. "One of those days, we're really gonna have to learn some Berber. So the Russian, who is he?"

"His name is Zarubin. When I was there, he was a HUMINT officer with Department X, that's the branch that ran the Red Room Academy. He did some of our debriefings. I don't know why he's here, though... it doesn't make sense. He's not a field agent," she explained. The stall owner was gesturing now, pointing back and forth between them with a broad smile. She nodded vaguely at him out of politeness.

"We've gotta assume he's here with Vanalman, then. But why? Why, why why. I hate this, we're missing a big piece of the puzzle and we don't have time to regroup for analysis," Clint worried under his breath.

The animated spice vendor suddenly pushed a glass jar of the brown paste Natasha had been admiring into her hands. "Amalou!" he declared with a wink. "Un petit cadeux pour votre mari!" he switched to French. For her  _husband_?

"Pour mon... ah, non, non!" Natasha started to correct him, but Clint squeezed her arm.

"Leave it," he murmured. "Let's not draw any attention."

Natasha smiled sweetly instead at the stall owner. She held out a handful of dirhams, which he waved off. "Non, madame," he insisted, pushing her hand away. "Laisser le amalou dans votre chambre, vous pouvez l'avoir pour le petit déjeuner!" he cackled.

Natasha laughed weakly, and Clint pulled her away from the stall. They melted back into the crowd. "Why would I want to keep this in my bedroom?" Natasha queried, opening the small jar. She stuck her finger into the paste, sniffed it and cautiously licked some of it off. "Ooooo, this is really good!" she said enthusiastically, holding the jar out to her partner.

Clint chuckled. "You're impossible. We happen to be in a live area of operation, if you hadn't noticed."

"I'm keeping cover," she scowled back at him. "Besides, all that blood loss made me hungry. This is sweet almond paste! And something else, maybe it's orange blossom? Mmmm." She continued to happily lick the contents of the jar off her fingers.

"You're like a cat," her partner commented, glancing over his shoulder. "Let's go up a block and circle back around toward the Riad, I want to see if we've got anymore Russians in the equation."

"You always have a Russian in the equation, Barton."

"One is all I can handle," he replied sardonically. "In fact, historically, it's been  _more_  than I can handle... and goddammit, Tasha... I'm trying to concentrate on not getting us killed. I can't do this if you're licking your fingers like that."

She guiltily pulled her finger from her mouth. "Oh. Whoops."

Clint harrumphed, and slowed his pace. "Better. Okay, looks like we have two security force agents on the corner. Let's get off the street, too many civilians in the Souk for this to end well."

Natasha squinted at the rooftops around them. "Higher ground?"

"That's always my preference," he observed, "but Timo knows that, too. He's expecting me alone, and he knows I do better from above."

"Please don't say what I think you're about to say," Natasha warned. "Just because you can't go up doesn't mean that we should go  _down_."

Clint took her hand in his and gently squeezed it. "Don't worry, I wasn't going to suggest you climb into the sewer..."

"Good."

"... I was going to suggest that  _I_  climb into the sewer," he finished. His partner made a dismayed noise but he ignored her. "Look, it makes sense. They aren't looking for you, Timo thinks you're dead. They  _are,_  however, looking for me."

"Then I'm going with you," she replied, her voice hard.

"No," Clint said, in his voice that suggested he was not open to negotiation on this. "You're walking around with bullet holes to the chest. Crawling through raw sewage and breathing sewer gas would be outright insanity, Tash."

Her face hardened. "I don't like it."

"I don't like it either, I mean it," he assured her with a grimace. "I'm not keen on you going solo right now and it's certainly not my idea of a good time. But if you climb into the sewer system, you're guaranteed to get an infection. I can't risk you like that, it's not necessary. Right now, I'm putting  _you_  at risk by standing here. You have a better shot moving in if I'm out of sight."

His partner looked downright angry, but he knew her well enough to know it was because he was right.

"You know I don't like pulling rank on you..." he spoke gently.

"Shut up, Barton," she responded flatly. "Your point has been taken. Current objectives?"

"Surveil only. Get close, stay hidden. We want to know who's there and how tightly sewn up that place is. Timo and the counsellor are primary targets to locate and identify. And the Russian, what's his involvement? It's unlikely he's alone. Check in with Coulson, give him an update and find out if he's made any progress on the counsellor. Get him to run Zarubin, see if anything interesting pops up on the computers. I'll make my way over here and look for any weak spots I can exploit from underground."

"Understood," Natasha nodded curtly. "Take the Grach," she added, palming her gun to him.

His lips twitched into a smile. "I knew you cared!" he teased her. His face, however, quickly turned solemn. "I need you to promise me something. If you start to fade at all, for any reason, you call Coulson and you evac, is that clear? You do  _not_  wait for me."

His partner's eyes narrowed. "Hang on, now, Clinton..."

"I mean it," he interrupted her firmly. "Natalia Alianova... you will not die again in Marrakech, is that understood? It's an order." She looked as though he had struck her, but he pressed on. "I can catch a later ride. If you have trouble breathing, if you start to bleed out, if you feel weak or go into shock, I  _need_  you to call it in. I will not let that traitorous asshole take away the only thing that has ever held any meaning to me in this fucked up world," he declared. "I refuse to give him that satisfaction. And if it happens..." he trailed off and his face softened. "Well. It's not going to, is it?"

Natasha's expression was stormy but her eyes were glistening. "You're a manipulative bastard," she spat out. "Why do I have to be the one to walk away?"

"Because I'm the one who's compromised, remember?" he whispered. Her eyes flashed defiantly. "Do you have something else you want to say, Romanova?"

"I do," she replied between clenched teeth. "But as I'm sure you're well aware, it's going to have to wait.  _Sir_."

"Good," he replied. "Because I want to have that talk, and we're both going to be alive when we have it. You go ahead. I'll cover you to the corner, once you're past those agents, I'll find covert sewer access."

She exhaled loudly, it wasn't precisely an affirmative but he knew she understood. She didn't like it, not even a tiny bit, but she would comply. As she strode away from him, she opened her little glass jar. She dipped her finger into her almond paste, and turned back to him, sucking her finger rebelliously. He stifled a laugh. That woman would be the death of him... if he didn't get her killed first.

* * *

**Chapter 7 - Division**

* * *

_PING!_

_Another aluminum can flew off the fence post, and Clint lowered the rifle with a wide grin. Andy's mouth was hanging open._

_"Holy smokes, Clint! You haven't missed a single one yet! Let's try it from the back of the field, that's gotta be at least a hundred yards from there."_

_Clint scrubbed his face with a dirty hand, and squinted at the sun. "Looks like lunch time, I should get home." he replied. He reluctantly held the rifle out to his best friend. "Will you hang on to Buzz for me? If Barney or my dad finds it..." he trailed off solemnly._

_Andy nodded. "Yeah. I know. It would be gone. I'll keep it safe. I promise._

Clint found a manhole cover behind a nearby shop, and with creative use of an awning pole from an empty market stall, had it open in short order. Wrinkling his nose at the fusty smells that emerged, he climbed down into the drain.

He found his bearings very quickly, figuring that he was about three blocks from the Riad Mimoun. Fortunately the Souk Semmarine was a major thoroughfare, so it looked like he was in one of the main sewer lines. "Lucky me," he muttered bitterly to himself.

The hem of his  _jellaba_  trailed in the drain water as he crept along. He impatiently pulled it off and discarded it, momentarily grateful that at least it felt somewhat significantly cooler underground. He shifted his quiver against his back and continued onwards.

He didn't like leaving his partner, not after nearly losing her, and he could feel his anxiety manifesting in a palpable tension across his trapezius muscles and a burgeoning headache. He tried to run through some relaxation exercises, but rapidly concluded that deep breathing in a sewer wasn't conducive to relieving his stress. Instead, he simply picked up his pace. The sooner he was underneath the Counsellor's stronghold, the better.

Natasha ambled out of the bazaar, clutching her pot of almond paste. If she remembered the map correctly, there was a park beside the Riad, and it would be unlikely for her to attract attention if she made that her destination. Largely anonymous under the hood of her  _mulhafa_ , she kept calm as she identified and bypassed several security agents as well as another machine gun crew. As much as she disliked it, Clint had been right to split up. It was clear that Vanalman hadn't mentioned her at all to his team.

She strolled along until she found a small, secluded courtyard with several large palm trees and a noisy fountain, not far from the Riad Mimoun. From here, she had a reasonable view of the Riad and a prime location to check in. She extracted the cellphone from her vest and called Coulson.

"Please tell me that you have good news," she said immediately when he answered, "because I don't."

"You first," came the reluctant reply.

Natasha swore. So Coulson hadn't made any progress yet with the counsellor. "We've got another variable in the equation. Vladimir Ruslanov Zarubin. He's here and that can't be a coincidence."

"I'll see what I can come up with," the senior agent responded. "Old friend?"

She snorted. "He's an intelligence officer with Department X... or at least, he used to be back in my day. Part of his mandate was the Black Widow Ops program."

"Did he make you out?"

Natasha paused. "Unsure. I don't think so. He's not a spy. If he did see me, though, I doubt he's forgotten me."

Agent Coulson chuckled warmly. "That's an understatement, Natasha. I don't think anyone could ever forget you. And speaking of unforgettable, how's Barton?" The pause that followed his question spoke volumes of tension. "Oh no."

"Oh yes," Natasha replied, teeth clenched. "He climbed into a sewer alone because he thinks I'm safer this way."

"You know you  _are_ , right?"

"Yes, but I'm still going to kick his ass over it. I hope to hell you're going to come through for us, Phil. When can you trigger that counsellor emergency beacon?"

"It's complicated. We're working on it. We already sent several coded messages to Counsellor Dodona that did not trigger the appropriate countersigns, so we know his communications are being intercepted. Beyond that, we're not sure of much. Monitor the situation and check in on the hour."

"You mean, hurry up and wait. Again." Natasha responded with a slight huff. "I know, I know."

"I'll run Zarubin and see what floats to the surface. Stay safe."

Natasha tucked the cellphone back into the folds of her  _mulhafa_ and exhaled slowly. She felt impotent and useless, and it wasn't a familiar sensation for her. Her chest burned, her pulse was thready, she was uncomfortably hot and there was an unpleasant panic starting to wriggle at the fringes of her mind, one that she knew was directly related to her partner moving towards a heavily fortified enemy position without her.

She scooped a healthy dollop of  _amalou_  from her jar and pensively sucked it from her finger. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a tall plant with broad, succulent leaves and strange fluffy white blooms. She bent towards it and softly touched one of the flowers, it looked and felt like a cotton ball. She had seen cotton fields in the southern United States, but this was more like a cactus with bunches of fuzzballs. Something about the plant made her smile. She gave into a strong wave of superstition and plucked some of the puffs from the plant. She held one in her palm and ran her thumb over it, soothed by its softness. Clint would have laughed at her. Knowing that too made her feel better. Maybe Marrakech wasn't so bad after all.

Clint crouched in a stagnant puddle with sweat beading on his forehead despite the cooler temperature underground. He was unmoving, focussed entirely on the tunnel stretching out in front of him. He figured he was directly underneath the sprawling Riad Mimoun complex, and he was sure there would be security features hidden in the sewer, given its size.

One of his buddies had been on the ground in Iraq and told him how they used silly string, the kind sprayed out of a can, to detect essentially invisible tripwires: it would hang in the air over wires but was light enough to avoid triggering the traps. It was a quick and dirty party trick that had ended up saving lives, and it had prompted Clint to add a can to his field kit. He sent out a silent thank you to whichever crazy soldier had made that ridiculous discovery as he quickly dug around his bag for his silly string.

Armed with a bright purple aerosol can, he slowly moved forward. He could see a manhole access in a juncture ahead, roughly where he imagined the Semmarine intersected with the private road leading into the Riad Mimou _n_. He sent out several jets of silly string, each traveling about ten feet, and carefully checked the ground for pressure plates. "Come on, Timo, you bastard," he murmured to himself. "I know you. No way you'd let a sewer main slide. Come onnnnn..."

His next burst of silly string was happy to confirm his suspicions. The skinny purple strand of foam seemed to dangle magically in the air several feet in front of him. He gave a celebratory whoop, spun around and before he could stop the words, they began to pour out of his mouth, "Ha haaa, Tasha! Check that..." he stopped, feeling more than a little silly. "...out."

Clint fought back against the wave of discomfort that rushed against him. He'd left her behind, she wasn't at his back. What was a perfectly sound and logical decision on the surface was now filling him with foreboding.

He turned back to the tripwire and tried to decipher it. Was it an alarm? An explosive? Where was it anchored? Traps were far from his specialty, this was Natasha's territory. She would have had the wire disarmed before he could even make a smart-ass comment. He was suddenly and painfully worried about her. Was she doing okay? Had any of Vanalman's team seen her? Could she breathe?

Clint spat out a long curse. Today had gotten to him like nothing else before ever had. Tasha getting shot, Timo betraying him, Tasha's unexpected delve into feelings he always kept a very tight lid on... he felt frayed around the edges. He took a deep breath, grimacing from the foul air, and mentally stuffed all his baggage back into the locked corner he normally kept it in. Not today, he though to himself. Some day, some time, but not now. Today Timo would die and Tasha would escape, and then. Then he would be clear.

* * *

**Chapter 8 - Sleep, Little Baby**

* * *

_Tears were running down Andy's face as he held out the BB rifle. "Before we go, I'd better give Buzz back to you. I hope you find a good place to hide 'im."_

_Clint was biting his lip hard enough to bleed. "I wish you didn't have to move," he whispered sadly. "I never had a best friend before. Why do you have to go?"_

_Andy sniffled. "Pa was just workin' on the farm for the summer, he says. We're going back to Des Moines to live with my grandma. Do you think you'll write me letters?"_

_Clint shrugged. "We don't go to the post office much," he replied slowly. He reached out and reverently took the Buzz Barton rifle from his friend. "G'bye, Andy."_

_"G'bye, Clint. Keep shootin'!"_

While Clint deconstructed the tripwire, Natasha waited. She counted the Riad guards, memorized their routes and idly hummed Russian cradle songs.

She was halfway through  _Спи, моя радость, усни_  when he stepped into the courtyard. She froze, her mind immediately racing through her options. She could have him dead on the cobblestones before he could scream, something he knew fully well and may have explained the wry smile on his face. She'd never seen him smile before, something about that held her in place and he remained alive.

Vladimir Ruslanov Zarubin was an intelligence officer from the old Soviet era. When Natasha first came to the US, Barton had made her sit down with a jumbo bag of popcorn to watch an endless rota of American movies featuring laughable stereotypes about Russia.  _The Hunt for Red October_  was one of the better ones, she recalled being amused that the Russian captain reminded her so much of Zarubin. Grizzled, grey-bearded and well-spoken, handsome in a mature and rather debonair way.

"It  _is_  you, Natalia Alianova!" the man from her past exclaimed, stopping a relatively safe distance from where she sat sedately on a stone bench. He beamed at her from underneath a bright red _keffiyeh_.

She nodded curtly. "Gospodin Zarubin."

He waved dismissively at the honorific. "Too formal, my dear girl! We are far from the concrete halls of Moscow, now, aren't we? Well, well. I never imagined I would run into you again. Bezukhov's lovely little killing machine. May I sit?"

He gestured at the bench and she gave another brief nod. He was no danger to her at her side, they both knew it. He sat down and she noted a slight stiffness in his motion. Zarubin was getting old.

"I wondered if I'd lost you," he admitted, "until I caught the faint melody of Mozart's lullaby. Beautifully musical! I'd love to hear you sing, Natka."

"Why are you here, Zarubin?" Natasha demanded.

He chuckled. "So blunt,  _Котёнка_! You have turned into a rude American now, have you? I presume I am here for much the same reason you are, and I now understand the 'complication' my contact from the West was lamenting. He insisted that SHIELD did not suspect his defection, but clearly he was mistaken if they have dispatched you to deal with him."

Natasha processed this new information and remained silent despite the Russian's erroneous assumption. Her heart was hammering against her chest as she gave him an appraising look. He returned her steady gaze, a frown creasing across his features.

"Natalia, you are grey. You look unwell," his voice reflected an unfamiliar concern.

"Your 'contact from the West' was not as pleased to see me as you are," she retorted.

Zarubin's face darkened. "I see. That is regrettable. Mr. Vanalman is... idealistic, but he lacks self-discipline."

"Idealism, is that what it was? Funny, it felt a lot like getting shot."

Zarubin spread his hands. "Ah, well, come now, Natalia. Let's not discuss how many people  _you_  have turned a gun on in pursuit of The Greater Good, yes? Mother Russia trained hundreds of dutiful daughters such as yourself in the name of ideology. Sadly, our leaders have since lost their way: Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova... ooof, the list goes on and it pains me. I don't blame you for fleeing to our enemy. I checked up on you often after you left, did you know that?"

Natasha was genuinely surprised, and shook her head. He smiled at her.

"Indeed. Of all Red Room graduates, you stuck with me, Miss Romanova. You were the best, of course, but there was something more to you than what your creators placed there. Hmmm, how to describe it? A more beautiful soul? Yes, your soul, that's it. It was visible in your eyes. And I was so curious where you would end up. Prague, Warsaw, Sarajevo, Belgrade... I visited you many times when you were freelancing. Then the Americans took you, and I thought it best to let you go. But I admit, my biggest hope was that you would teach them about that Greater Good, yes? I hope you did."

Natasha's head was reeling. Just as she opened her mouth to reply, an obnoxiously loud Arabic pop song began to emanate from her midsection. Both she and Zarubin nearly jumped off the bench. She pulled the cellphone out as it blared.

"Vulgar,  _Котёнка_ ," tutted Zarubin, and she glared at him.

"It's not mine!" she protested, inexplicably stung by his disapproval. She looked at the calling number and saw it was Coulson. "Um... can I take this?"

"I would really rather you did not," Zarubin's tone was stern. "There is little I find more rude. Now I  _know_  you've spent too much time with your Americans."

Abashed, Natasha stared at the phone as it continued to ring garishly in her hand. "This is ridiculous. Why the hell should I feel like a naughty schoolgirl, here?" she complained, snapping open the cellphone. "Romanoff," she barked, and Zarubin sighed.

"You're three minutes late," Coulson reported immediately.

"I have a visitor," she replied, giving the old intelligence officer a hard look.

"Zarubin?"

"Yes."

"Interesting. Department X believes he's dead. There have been whispers, though, that he faked it and is now a key player in a broader socialist movement."

"I'd say that's accurate," she commented, and Zarubin folded his arms impatiently. "He also doesn't approve of rude Americans taking cell phone calls during conversations."

"I'll be brief, then. Watch your back, Natasha. Zarubin isn't likely to be violent but smart money says that he's there to meet Vanalman, and there isn't much that scares me more than a man on a crusade. Looks like we have Timo's motive. Don't let Zarubin lead you back to the wolves."

Coulson hung up after his warning, and Natasha slowly closed the phone.

"Well, then, my dear," the man beside her rumbled. "Where do we go from here? I have business with Vanalman that I'd prefer you not to interrupt. And where is your thrall?"

"My what?"

"The muscled lout you were with in the souk, carrying the heavy bag and glaring at every man who looked at you."

"He's not a lout!" she spluttered. "That's my partner!"

Zarubin's eyes went wide, and he erupted in a genuine laugh. "Oh! No longer the honey trap! You found yourself a teammate? My, my, how you  _must_  have changed! Apologies to your partner, then, although he  _was_  glaring like a rutting stag. And I hope, for his sake, he is nowhere near the Riad Mimoun. This same advice I give to you, Natka. I fancy myself a philosopher and a humanist; I do not advocate violence unless it is unavoidable. I cannot say the same for Vanalman. He's young and full of fervor, and thus unpredictable. Like you were, actually, when I knew you," he said, his eyes twinkling.

"I'm still not forgiving him for shooting me," Natasha grumbled.

"And me?" the older man asked. "Will you shoot me now, when I walk away?"

Natasha's expression was hurt. "Of course not, Gospodin!"

He stood up and kissed her on the top of her head. The gesture triggered a flood of emotion in her, the first link to her past that failed to fill her with self-loathing. She looked up at him with luminous eyes and he smiled warmly.

"You are not a monster, Natalia Alianova, no matter what you tell yourself. Remember old Vladimir Ruslanov, the paper pusher, who looked into your eyes and saw your soul."

* * *

**Chapter 9 - Interlude**

* * *

_"No, I swear to God, it's right here," Clint insisted as he pulled a long wooden case down from the top of his hall closet. His partner was still shaking her head in disbelief as he carried the case into the living room and sat back down on the floor. He passed her the case and grabbed another beer off the coffee table._

_The redhead beside him opened the case with childlike excitement, and stared at the contents for several stunned seconds before exclaiming with glee. "Holy shit, Barton, you didn't mention that it had your_ name _on it!" She pulled the antique BB rifle out of the box and turned it in her hands._

_"Not my name, Buzz Barton's," he grinned, secretly pleased by her enthusiasm. "He was a child rodeo and circus star back in the 20's and 30's, did a bunch of Western B-movies. Daisy Rifles made this branded air rifle when he was popular."_

_"This is amazing," she murmured, running her fingers over the branded maple stock. "This gun is probably what made you, you know."_

_He chuckled. "Hey now, don't bad-mouth my Buzz! It's all I had for a long time, it was often my only friend. And I'll be honest, it feels really weird to be showing it to you. I have never shown that BB gun to anyone." He took a long swig of his beer to cover the tightness in his chest caused by his admission._

_Natasha turned her twinkling eyes to him, which didn't help. "So this is like, the Barton equivalent of taking a girl home to meet your mom?" she teased._

_He blushed, but laughed. "You could call it that, I guess... it's pretty much the grandest gesture of trust I've got."_

_She cocked her head. "I'm honored, Clint. Thank you. How long have you moved this around?" she asked. She placed the rifle back in its case with reverent hands, closed it up and reached for her beer._

_He exhaled loudly. "Oh, geez... I was just a little kid when we found it in an old barn. I've been hiding it around in various places ever since... my dad would pawn anything of value we had if he got his hands on it. I had it in a storage locker upstate while I was in the army... it was the first thing I brought home when SHIELD okayed me to get my own place."_

_He gave her a long, pensive look. "I know you're nomadic too... but was there anything you've been able to hang on to? Something to remind you of who you are?"_

_Natasha titled her chin up, bit her lower lip and frowned. After a few moments, she put her beer on the glass coffee table and stood up abruptly. Clint raised his eyebrow in concern._

_"Hang on," she said assuringly. "Just grabbing my purse." She retrieved her hand bag and pulled out her wallet. From that, she extracted something and returned to the living room. Without sitting or commenting, she handed it to Clint._

_He looked at the item. It was a brief, yellowed Russian newspaper clipping. It looked like it had been laminated right when it was at risk of falling apart. He scanned the Cyrillic text briefly. "An unidentified body pulled from the River Volga...? Oh man, a little girl."_

_Natasha nodded. "Her name was Katerina."_

_He re-read the article and looked up at his partner. Her eyes had become glossy, she was trying not to cry. "Was she your friend?" he asked, his voice soft._

_Natasha snorted. "No, not at all. She was another Black Widow protege, they actively discouraged us from liking each other."_

_Clint shook his head, and Natasha curled up beside him. He slung his arm over her shoulders. "Jesus. They started you all so young." He planted a quick kiss on the top of her head._

_"The last words I said to her were that I wouldn't cry when she was dead. And then... and then I... I think I killed her."_

_Clint's blood ran cold and he shuddered. He quickly pulled her into a tight hug before she would worry that she'd repelled him with her confession._

_She turned her bright eyes up to him, the tears spilled over. "And it was a lie. I did cry. When I saw that newspaper, months later... a little girl with a crushed trachea... I knew it was her and I knew it was me. And I_ did _cry. So I ripped it out and kept it with me, wherever I went, to remind myself that I'll always be a monster."_

* * *

**Chapter 10 - Darkness**

* * *

 

_"...I'll always be a monster."_

_Her whispered words had shocked him, deeply. He was torn by competing impulses: he wanted to shake her, yell at her that she was wrong, hold her so tightly and run his fingers across her porcelain face to show her that nothing so perfect could simultaneously be so flawed. All he managed to do was meet her gaze and mirror sadness back at her. Slowly, she pulled the laminated paper from his hands, and brushed her tears away._

_"Tasha..." he began, aching with his inability to say or do whatever would magically free her from her delusion._

_"Shhhhh," she interrupted, pressing her tear-damp fingers to his lips and stunning him into silence. "I know that you want to tell me that I'm not, and I know you're trying to figure out how to say it in a way that will make me believe you. But it doesn't work that way, Clint. I AM a monster. I wasn't trained to be like this... I was forged. That's what the Black Widow Ops program was for. It erased little girls and replaced them with monsters in pigtails."_

_He frowned. "That's not fair. You're undermining me before I can even say a word."_

_"I don't want you to lie to make me feel better, Barton."_

_This time, he did actually give her a slight shake. "I have_ never _lied to you, Natalia, and it hurts that you think I'd start now."_

_She shifted her gaze down and focussed on the scrap of newspaper in her hands, unable to let him see the shame in her eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't mean that you would be deceitful, not intentionally. I just mean that you think you see something else, but you are wrong."_

_Clint gently tugged her chin back up, forcing her to look at him. "Don't tell me what you think I can see. I'm Hawkeye, remember? There is very little about me that is extraordinary, in any way... but I_ can _see. I can see what you are, Tasha, and one day you'll be willing to see it too."_

* * *

Clint just couldn't shake the feeling of dread that had taken hold deep inside, and it was slowly driving him crazy. He felt like he had gone from a strong, confident soldier to a man with... well... with a weakness. A red-headed Russian weakness who was  _supposed_  to be invincible and unattainable but had ruined everything in that moment she chose to come down to his level and kiss him the way he had dreamed about almost every night since they had met. He shook his head in frustration, as though he could jar all thought of her from his mind.

Another tripwire, lower to the ground. His eyes traced the wire back to a well-hidden bomb. Automatically, his brain broke it down for him.  _Valmara 69 anti-personnel bounding fragmentation mine, made in Italy. Five-pronged tilt fuze, can also be triggered via pressure. Inner canister filled with chopped steel._  Natasha had shown him how there was a significant variance in V69 build quality and sometimes, if it wasn't too rusted, she could replace the arming switch rather than try to disar...

"DAMMIT!" he swore out loud, startling an adventurous rat. Every thought was leading back to her. He needed to focus. He was able to easily bypass the tripwire and made his way to what he reckoned was one of the closest storm drains to the  _Riad Mimoun_. He squinted upwards, through the grate, and saw his first stroke of luck of the day: a utility pole.

He grinned as he picked out, in addition to various electrical and telecomm wires, the boxy distribution transformer high on the pole. A well-placed arrow would knock out power, phone and internet to the entire block. He was sure that the stronghold would have backup power, but enough for  _all_  their systems? Probably not.

He had a quick internal debate over whether or not to announce his presence by cutting the utilities, before concluding that Timo knew damn sure he was coming anyway. He didn't  _really_  have the element of surprise, but he might be be able to earn a psychological edge. His real trump card was Natasha. There was no way his old friend suspected she had survived, and even wounded, she was more deadly than anything Timo could throw at them...

And again. His mind had circled back to Natasha. With a grimace, he extended his bow and nocked an arrow. These cyclical thoughts were a danger to both of them. He cleared his mind, raised his bow and the arrow effortlessly flew upwards. With the press of a button on his quiver, the small charge in the arrow's head exploded and the transformer blew apart with an impressive shower of sparks.

He collapsed his bow with grim determination and continued along this sewer. He was going to exploit every weakness he could find and then tear the safe house apart, stone by stone, with his bare hands. And when he found Timo... Clint set his teeth. He was going to carve Timo in tiny pieces and string his bow with that bastard's guts. He found the grizzly thought intensely comforting, and he hoped that since announcing his presence by blowing the transformer, Timo could feel it too.

* * *

Natasha raised one of her eyebrows with interest as she heard a loud "pop!" from somewhere down the street and the  _Riad Mimoun's_  lights flickered off. An alarm started to blare within the building and she smugly watched the guards outside as they started to scramble around. Clint had obviously found a weak spot.

From her current vantage point in the secluded courtyard, she didn't have very much of the street surrounding the  _Riad_  in view, so she decided to get moving again. It didn't take long before she located Clint's target, a utility pole near the  _Riad_  sporting a blown transformer, the shaft of one of his arrows on the road amongst the debris. Casually, she glanced down the nearby storm drain he must have shot from. Damn, he was  _good_.

Seeing the arrow, physical evidence that he was nearby, soothed her. She passed by the safe house, pleased by the subdued chaos that seemed to be taking place behind its sturdy gates. She overheard a familiar voice screaming instructions over the guards' radios, and she picked up her pace. Vanalman was there! She thrust a hand into the folds of her  _mulhafa_ , grasping one of her Pernachs reassuringly. Soon. He'd meet his end soon enough.

In the fading light, Natasha noticed a textile shop ahead, roughly kitty-cornered to the  _Riad Mimoun_  grounds. Bolts of brightly coloured fabrics leaned up against its sandstone walls. She ambled into the store and made a pretence of examining swaths of cloth. From here, she could still hear the alarms and see the occasional movement of heavily armed agents rushing back to the stronghold. She was watching a search light swoop over the treed estate when a little voice at her side, speaking in accented French, startled her.

"Something strange is happening over there."

Natasha yelped ungracefully and quickly looked down, finding a small Berber boy of perhaps six years or so by her side. His expression was comically serious.

Natasha smiled at him. "Do you know what's going on?"

The boy shrugged. "I don't know. Our electricity has gone out, though. How come they still have lights?"

Natasha crouched down to the boy's height. "I think they have back-up power for some of their lights," she replied.

The boy noticed her jar of almond paste, and pointed at it. "Is that  _amalou_? Are you trying to have a baby?"

Natasha's mouth hung open, temporarily speechless. "What?" she finally spluttered.

His coal-black eyes brightened. "You must be! My mother says she wants another baby, and so she eats a lot of  _amalou_. But my parents, they keep it in the bedroom, they don't carry it around with them.

Natasha's fingers twitched around her little pot and she blushed furiously. "Ohhhh. Oh, no. No, I just like it. It's tasty."

"Oh," the boy said sadly, and they both fell quiet for several moments before he perked up again. "Maybe you'll have a baby anyway!"

She stood up, wincing as her chest wounds pulled. "Is your mother here?" she asked, briskly changing the subject.

He nodded. "She's bringing the silks upstairs. The shop is closing, so you should chose your fabric quickly. She can't keep the shop open late because she must go over to the  _Riad Mimoun_  to do the laundry."

Natasha stared at the boy, feeling suddenly as though the world had shifted into slow-mode. "To... to do the laundry," she repeated slowly, and he nodded. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Isul Hasnaoui," he replied proudly, standing as tall as he could for his diminutive size.

"Well, hello, Isul, my name is Najia," she said, rendering her name in a local form. "Let's help your mother with the silks and close the shop. I'm  _very_  good at doing laundry, maybe she'd like an assistant tonight."

* * *

**Chapter 11 - Dirty Laundry**

* * *

 

Through a narrow metal grate, Clint watched the sky grow dark. He could hear the alarms blaring from the Counsellor's safe house and decided it was time to leave the miasma of the sewer. The  _Riad_ estate was thick with foliage; he was confident he could lurk undetected for at least as long as it would take to secure the counsellor and neutralize Vanalman. After disarming several explosive charges on the nearest manhole cover, he was back on the surface.

Clint quickly scaled the  _Riad's_  surrounding fence, and faded into the vegetation. He was thankful for the common Islamic distaste for dogs... it was unlikely Timo had been able to bring any canine units into the stronghold. It was going to make hiding in the shadows much easier.

He prowled around the compound like a large jungle cat, low to the ground and perfectly silent. From the shadows, he analyzed: counted guards, assessed access points and identified possible targets. Over the next half hour, he had not been able to get a visual on either Timo or Counsellor Dodona, but that didn't surprise him. The counsellor would likely be at the center of the compound, away from windows and difficult to reach. Timo would be with him. Standard protocol had the counsellor at maximum risk, and Clint still hadn't figured out what they were going to do if Coulson couldn't get through to him. This was all assuming, of course, that the counsellor was even still alive. If he knew what Timo's goal was, if he knew what psychosis was driving that goddamned, treasonous son of a bitch...

Clint's violent grousing ground to a halt as he trained his binoculars on the back of the  _Riad Mimoun_. Two women, each carrying a large basket of linens, approached the service entrance. They were laughing amiably and herding a small boy between them. Their faces were almost completely covered under bright  _tahruyt_  veils, but it didn't make a difference, he knew it was her. A dozen barely definable things screamed her name at him: the dancer's posture, the confident bearing, the way she effortlessly held the basket, the invisible lines of her Pernachs on her hips, scarcely touched by the loose fabric of her  _mulhafa_.

Clint's throat went dry and closed over as he watched Natasha enter the safe house. He was briefly paralyzed. Was she totally fucking insane? What part of "surveil only, stay hidden" had not been clear? She was walking right into the lion's den without back-up. Everyone inside was on high-alert; if Timo saw her, there would be no possibility of her making it out alive.

He lowered his binoculars and sat back on his heels, exhaling slowly. He knew he shouldn't be fuming. He closed his eyes and tried to talk some sense into himself, something to fight the impulse to run after her. Tasha was a more-than-competent operative and she must have seen an opportunity she couldn't miss if she was going counter to his directives. She must have done the risk analysis. She must have assessed the danger and proceeded regardless. Now he needed to figure out the best way to back her up from a distance, it was really no different from so many other missions they had completed together. He took several deep breaths, centering himself. The objectives hadn't changed. Strike Team Delta wasn't going to fail.

* * *

Isul's mother was named Taziri. She was sweet and beautiful and had been doing the laundry at the  _Riad Mimoun_  since she was in her teens, she told Natasha. She liked the staff there, she said, although sometimes they had important guests and the security got a little crazy. Taziri apologized for the blaring sirens as they crossed the road to the compound. The guards would all be running in circles and yelling into their radios, she laughed brightly, but they would still expect their beds to be changed.

Natasha smiled in agreement behind her  _tahruyt_ , but inwardly her mind boggled at the stupidity. The  _Riad_  was supposed to be on lockdown. SHIELD protocol dictated that no one was supposed to be going in or out, even service staff, and yet here they were... about to stroll into the stronghold with their arms full of clean linen. Timo was slipping, maybe his duplicity was distracting him from basic operations. She snorted in derision. She was happy to take advantage of that asshole when he was dropping the ball.

Isul skipped along beside them, chattering constantly. He was a babbling steam of consciousness and the way he hopped from thought to thought was making Natasha's head swim. He asked if he could change the pillow cases. He was hungry and asked for an orange. His  _jellaba_  was making him itchy. He wanted to play with the new kittens at the  _Riad_... this announcement flummoxed Natasha briefly due to the unfamiliar French word he used, " _minou_ ". Children's slang for kitties had strangely not been covered when she did her recent language review.

"Isul, be a good helper and ring the bell," Taziri called to her son as they arrived at the service entrance. Natasha took a half-step into the shadows as the boy pressed the doorbell, and the door flew open several moments later.

A rather harried-looking matron sighed with relief when she saw her laundress. " _M'selkhir_ ," she greeted them, ushering them in. She grinned at Isul and rubbed his hair affectionately. "Apologies for the noise and darkness! We have lost our electricity and of course the men are in a panic."

Taziri nodded. "Yes, there is no power at our place either.  _Lalla_  Loubna, this is my friend,  _Lalla_  Najia. She is helping me with the laundry tonight."

Natasha tilted her head in greeting. " _Lalla_  Loubna, it is an honour."

The matron's eyes narrowed slightly. "A friend, eh? Good... your back has not been good, Taziri, since your fall. It's about time you had someone to help you. Well met, Najia. We have important guests here and they have many guards. Make up all the beds and please work quickly. Everyone is on edge with these infernal alarms and the faster you are out, the better. Isul, why don't you run to the kitchen? Cook made some  _mescouta_  today and the little cats need to burn off some energy."

At the mention of baked treats and kittens, Isul's eyes lit up and he scampered off. Taziri waved Natasha along, and they carried their baskets up to the living quarters. It was all too easy, Natasha realized. Was it really going to be this simple? Maybe her luck was changing.

For probably the first time ever, Natasha was grateful for all the missions she had spent pretending to be a housekeeping maid. Maybe it was a lack of imagination at SHIELD or maybe it was Director Fury's twisted sense of humour, but it was usually their go-to method for infiltrating hotel rooms. She was a secret master of making beds, whether it was hospital corners or the three-sheet method, a rollaway or a California King. She snapped clean linens throughout the bedrooms at the Riad Mimoun with a speed that had Taziri staring at her in awe.

"Najia, Isul said you were very good at laundry," her new friend murmured, "but I wasn't expecting you to be  _this_  good."

Natasha smiled warmly. "I made many, many beds in my time as a housemaid," she said, making up a backstory on the fly. "Before I got married, of course."

Taziri nodded as they bundled dirty laundry into their baskets. "Your husband, what is his name? What does he do?"

Natasha paused for a moment, improvising quickly. "Mohammed," she answered, randomly picking a common name. "Mohammed Bartoun. He is an engineer." Natasha's thoughts had flashed to the field of solar panels and wind turbines they had flown over on the approach to Marrakech.

"He must be a good man," Taziri's eyes sparkled. "I saw the pot of  _amalou_  you left at my shop."

Natasha didn't have to try very hard to conjure up a rosy blush. "Um, yes. Well, I was at the Souk el Attarine, and I saw it and... well..." she trailed off, affecting shyness. The other woman laughed heartily.

"Oh Najia, you don't have to explain! Mehdi brings me  _amalou_  every week, now that we are trying for another baby! It will make us both fertile, you'll see. You keep it by your bed, it will do its magic while Mohammed does his," Taziri winked.

Natasha's throat had gone dry as, unbidden, her brain supplied images of herself and Barton together. Taziri chuckled at her speechlessness. "Let's get the dirty laundry from the kitchen and find Isul. We'll have to search his  _jellaba_  for kittens before we go, he keeps trying to smuggle one home."

The two women returned to the main floor, where a loud argument in English was taking place behind large, closed double doors. They paused awkwardly in the hallway. Taziri winced behind her _tahruyt_  and Natasha's heart began to race... one of the voices was clearly Timo.

"... there is no doubt in my mind that the threat was credible, sir, and I'm absolutely insisting that theta protocol remains in effect..."

"God dammit, you're not listening to me," a gruff voice shouted, interrupting Vanalman's tirade. "I know exactly what theta protocol means, and I know where I can draw the line. Stop intercepting my blue-coded messages, Timo, and get me a direct line to New York before..."

"The threat is from the  _inside_ , Counsellor, and we can't rely on New York to be clean..."

Taziri cleared her throat, snapping Natasha's attention away from the doors. "Important men," she said softly, "sounds like they disagree on important things. We should go. Loubna will have the kitchen laundry ready."

Natasha nodded silently, following the laundress back towards the service quarters. Inside, she was gleeful. If cracks were appearing in Timo's plan, that was a boon for them. It would be easy enough to feign a reason to come back to the  _Riad_ once the Hasnaouis were safely out of the way... a lost necklace or a forgotten bedspread perhaps. She knew Barton would be on the grounds by now, she needed to meet back up with him. Strike Team Delta wasn't going to fail.

* * *

**Chapter 12 - Possession**

* * *

He knew she was behind him

It started with a heaviness, a practically imperceptible shift in the way the night air coalesced and the bending of ambient sounds around something that wasn't previously there before. The change in the air brought a particular presence with it. Clint couldn't fairly describe it as a scent, since it defied categorization as any known fragrance, but he breathed in a subtle aura that he knew well. It was the same warm redolence he would inhale whenever he pressed his face into the crook of Natasha's arm or the space above her collarbone. It was something undefinable encoded in her DNA that he had become primitively attuned to.

His fingers instinctively tightened around the binoculars in his right hand, causing the faintest swelling of his brachioradialis muscle. That was Natasha's first indication he had become aware of her. She expected him to turn around, to stand up from his crouched position, even to say something, but he didn't move. Her stomach tightened.

"Ты сердишься на меня?" Her voice was barely a whisper, but it still sounded like a clarion above the continuing alarms.  _Are you mad at me?_

Slowly, he pivoted around to face her. He had discarded his Moroccan robe and was dark and grimy from his trip underground, but his stormy eyes glowed. "Я не имею права быть."  _I have no right to be_.

"That's not what I asked, Clint," she replied in English. She knelt down to meet his eyes, making nary a sound in the leafy undergrowth, and pulled her veil down from her face.

His face was expressionless in the moonlight. "I am a bit mad, yes. But I'm more mad at myself for feeling that way."

"I'm sorry I didn't follow your orders."

"You shouldn't be", he replied harshly. "You had a clear opportunity to infiltrate our target's base of operations and I would be angry if you hadn't. Mission parameters change as the circumstances dictate. You are not the problem. I am the problem."

Hurt flashed across his partner's face. "Clint, no. Please..."

"I can't do this, Tash," he interrupted. "When I thought you were dead, I have never been so scared in my life, that's God's own truth. This is full exposure of a fatal weakness. I  _will_  get one or both of us killed."

"You don't know that," she snapped back at him. "You're being melodramatic!"

He leaned fully towards her and grabbed both of her arms. Adrenaline dumped into her system on instinct, making her muscles tense and her heart race. "I'll tell you what I know," he growled at her. "You are the center of my whole goddamned universe and we're off-balance now. I don't know how to detach. I have tried, for years. I kept telling myself that I could ignore it and it would go away. Today, two bullets showed me that it's impossible. And then you kissed me."

His breath was audible as he dropped his hold on her, and he sunk his head into his hands. She slowly reached her trembling fingers towards his face. Upon her light touch, he pulled her cool hand against his cheek and held her there, his eyes closed.

She inched closer towards him, and when he didn't move, she wrapped her free arm around his muscled shoulder and pulled at him. Sighing, he didn't resist, so she gathered him into her embrace.

"Я не знаю, что делать," he murmured, and tears sprang to her eyes.  _I don't know what to do._ "I'm compromised, Nat."

She sank her free hand into his sandy blond hair and rubbed her thumb back and forth. It was ludicrous, she thought, that they were going to have this discussion here and now, crouched in a dark thicket of palm trees and sedge grass, but it had to happen. She had broken him, however unintentionally, and she had fix him.

"Clint," she whispered, bowing her head over him and pressing her lips to his hair. His eyes remained closed, his face pressed into her neck. "We're not off-balance, you're not seeing the whole picture. You don't... you don't orbit me. Listen to me. We orbit each other."

He pulled away and looked at her, confusion evident on his tired face. She pressed both of her hands onto the strong lines of his jaw, relishing the brush of stubble on her cool hands and the way his pulse jumped under her middle fingers. Her lips had opened slightly, as though she was about to speak. She cocked her head, her expression curious, and she moved in close to him.

She felt his heartbeat quicken under her fingertips. Very slowly, she brought her mouth to his and softly brushed his lips with her own. He closed his eyes again, the shake of his head almost imperceptible. She withdrew slightly and bit her lower lip.

After several moments, Clint dared to open his eyes. She was only inches away from him, eyes shining with tears and her soft, pink lips pouting. It was unearthly, how beautiful she was, he wondered to himself out of nowhere. He should have known he wasn't strong enough to be her partner. He had to confess that to her.

"Natalia," he murmured, "you and me... together, we are the best. We're like... one mind, right? More than just partners, we're a figure and its shadow. Your thoughts are always my thoughts."

She nodded in agreement, saying nothing.

"I can't fight this flaw, Nat. We're not one anymore. There is just you... and everything I would do to keep you safe. Our objectives are diverging. It won't be long before I make a split-second call that gets you killed, because I hesitated at a risk. I'm a liability to you."

To his surprise, the corners of her mouth twitched into a hidden smile. He frowned, and she pulled her hands away from him. She sat back on her heels, grinning openly, and the tears that had been shining in her eyes finally spilled down her cheeks.

"Did I say something... funny?" he asked, bewildered.

She continued to smile at him. "No," she replied softly. "It's just that you described something so perfectly, something I've been unable to put my finger on." She wiped the tears from her cheeks and exhaled with what sounded like relief.

"Um... and that's good...? I guess?"

She crept forward on her knees. "Medellín, the cartel drop. I neutralized three guards outside the kill box, you remember?"

"Yeeeeah...?"

"They were going for the stairs. You were focussed on Alcázar, they might have waylaid you."

He stared at her. "That was highly unlikely, Nat."

"I know that. Logically, you're right, you would have been fine. But it happened. Then Munich, the Aegerter mission. I lost visual on my target for 90 seconds by the pool and had to call you for a location, remember? The pool distracted me, I was thinking about the previous day, when we went swimming. When I decided that you have the most beautiful inguinal ligaments I've ever seen," she murmured. She reached out towards his abdomen, tracing the line of his pelvis across his tactical vest.

Clint looked genuinely shocked. "Natalia, that's... that's scandalous, is what it is!"

She nodded with a smirk. "Monrovia, data recovery. I bumped into you outside Boakai's office because I was checking out your ass."

Clint stared at his partner, not understanding what he was hearing. "My...  _what?_  Have you gone mad?" His head was spinning, unable to follow what he refused to believe what his giddy partner was saying. "I'm completely lost," he admitted. "I was never any good at this sort of conversation. That's why my marriage imploded... or so I'm told."

Natasha pushed the hood of her  _mulhafa_  off her head, causing a chunk of her wavy red hair to tumble into her face. Clint reached out, tenderly pushing it behind her ear. She reached out to him, and he pulled her into his lap with a sigh.

"Tell me that you do it too," she pleaded, gazing down at him with her luminous emerald eyes.

"I'm doing it right now!" he protested. "We're in a live theatre of operation, here! You have an infiltration window that you should be taking advantage of as we speak! But no, instead, we're canoodling in the grass!"

Natasha grimaced. "Canoodling? Are you making up words again?"

"I am not," he declared firmly. "Canoodling is a real English word, it means... it's when you... oh, hell. It's like this." He reached up without warning and pulled her down, clamping his mouth to hers in a primal burst of possession. She made a sound he'd never heard from her before, something between a whimper and a moan, and it set him on fire. His broad hands tightened on her back, bringing her closer, deepening his kiss as he all but devoured her.

He was everywhere. She wove her hands behind his neck, locking her fingers together with no conscious intention of ever letting him go. Completely breathless, she tossed her head back and he moved down her neck with a low growl, kissing her along all of her pulse points until she moaned again. Her stomach tightened with desire and she needed all of him. She ducked down, capturing his lips with hers and overpowering him utterly. His hands on her back were hot, burning brands of ownership onto her skin, and she wanted them everywhere. Unconsciously, she pressed her body hard against his, eliciting a groan from him that made her head spin.  _Yes_ , her mind screamed at her.  _Yes, she belonged to him_.

"Natasha," he moaned into her kiss. "Holy shit, Nat. This is... this is crazy. It's... pure insanity." His hands moved down her back, unable to stop himself from grasping at her.

She ran her tongue along his lips, causing him to shiver despite the oppressive heat. "Yessss," she agreed, nipping and sucking at him bottom lip. "We'll stop. We'll stop in a minute. But I needed you to know." She moved along his jawline, doing things with her tongue that left him trembling.

"Know what?" he whispered, burying his face into the side of her neck and inhaling deeply. "I don't think I know anything anymore. I don't even know my name right now."

She grinned, he felt her smiling against his flesh. Very simply, she murmured by his ear, "Я твой."  _I'm yours_.

For a fleeting moment, he could have cried. He reluctantly loosened his grasp on her. "I'm not sure what you're saying. I don't want to hope that it means something it doesn't, Tasha..."

"It does," she interrupted, shaking him lightly. "I'm saying I can't bear to be without you, Clint, and that has affected my choices in the field. But it makes us stronger, can't you see it? It's the reason why we think as one. You don't feel this way alone."

"Natasha," he whispered, somehow managing to fill her name with all of the emotion she was feeling. "I want you so badly. I want every inch of you, inside and out, I want the glint of your knives and the twist of your smile and the words you mumble in Russian when you're asleep beside me. I want to have your back and give you my arrows and do whatever it takes to get us a mission accomplished and a ticket home. And I want to do it for as long as you'll let me."

"Clint," she murmured in reply. "I want you so badly, it's driving me crazy. I want your cheesy jokes and your serious grey eyes and your glorious forearms, preferably wrapped around me, each and every time that can be arranged. I want you to bring me coffee when the sun is setting and we're about to go to work. I want to be a team and think together and know that when you're with me, I'm not so much of a monster. For as long as you'll let me."

His grey eyes were, in fact, very serious at that moment, and he nodded slowly. "It's a promise, Natalia Alianova Romanova. This really IS crazy, you know, but dammit... I'm yours."

* * *

**Chapter 13 - Possibilities**

* * *

"Alright, firecracker, give me the inside story," Clint asserted, turning from his partner and gazing grimly at the barely-lit Riad Mimoun.

"Timo is holed up with the counsellor in the dining room area, but they are arguing," Natasha reported. "He's got a full counter-insurgency team but... I dunno, they are strangely sloppy. No one gave the laundry lady or me a second glance.  _You_  could stroll through the back door in a veil and a falsetto and Timo would be none the wiser."

Clint frowned in the darkness. "Let's save that for Plan B, shall we? It's not like him to be careless. He's a pro. We're... we're very much the same, him and I."

"Not even close, from where I'm standing. He's rattled, big time. Also, I had a nice chat with Zarubin while you were searching the sewers for the Ninja Turtles."

The archer stared at her, open-mouthed, as a variety of emotions flashed through his eyes.

"What's your problem, Barton?" she taunted him with a smirk. "We wanted intel, we got it."

"Hang on," he spluttered, "I'm still trying to decide what reaction to go with... the one where I panic because you confronted a Red Room agent alone or the one where I burst with pride that my Russian made a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle reference."

"Can I formally request the latter?"

"I'm still on the fence. We can come back to it later. What did you get out of Zarubin?"

"Timo's motive. It's ideological. Zarubin faked his death in Russia, now he's a player in a socialist splinter cell. The greater good blah blah blah," she scoffed.

Clint harrumphed. "Oh, right. Yeah, I got some of that after he shot you. He was ranting some garbage about corruption and decadence and whatever... I wasn't exactly paying attention." He reached out and squeezed her hand, comforting himself that she was still alive and with him. "Do we know what Vanalman's move is, then?"

"No. Zarubin was cordial, but not  _that_  cordial. He made it clear that he was here for Vanalman, and he wanted us to stay clear. He's probably not alone. Chances are they'll move on Counsellor Dodona, but I don't know what form that's going to take. Timo has something to prove, though, so it doesn't bode so well for the counsellor."

"And Zarubin?" Clint asked, arching an eyebrow.

Natasha sighed, and looked away. "I... I let him go."

Her partner's eyes widened in surprise. "Is everything okay, Tash?"

"Yeah. I know it's likely going to come back and bite me in the ass, you don't need to tell me. But... it's complicated. Can you just... trust me on this one?"

He gave her a long, appraising look. "You don't have to ask that, I trust you more than I trust myself. It's just that everything you've told me about your past didn't leave me thinking there was someone out there you would leave standing, if given the chance. So tell me that I'm wrong and he won't hurt us, and I'll believe you."

Natasha grimaced. "Well, he won't hurt  _me_ , and if he so much as touches  _you_ , I'll Feilong kick his beard off."

Clint stifled a laugh and leaned forward to give her a quick kiss on the cheek. "Good enough for me. But I want to see that kick some day."

"I'll save it for Stark. The next time he makes a smart ass comment to you, that goatee is gone. I need to get moving, I want to get back inside before the guards find their brains. I'll knock out their generators and you can join the party. Where do you want to come in? I like the west terrace on the second floor, it leads into the staff common area."

"Sounds like the lady has a plan. Where are Vanalman and Dodona?"

Natasha quietly gave her partner a quick run down on the layout inside the building, then handed him their stolen cellphone. "Call Coulson, find out what theta protocol is and how likely it is to screw us."

Clint jammed the phone and his binoculars into his vest pocket and pulled his quiver off his shoulder. "That's yet another good reason not to take a council job. A whole new language of bullshit to memorize."

She chuckled, before asking quietly, "Did you mean what you said earlier? About turning down a promotion to stay with me?"

He gave her a flat look. "He was wearing a suit, firecracker.  _A suit_. In Marrakech. I would sooner die than take a job that requires formalwear."

Natasha smirked as she pulled her  _tahruyt_  back up across her face. "If we make it out of here alive, will you wear a tux for me?"

His eyes narrowed. "Maybe. It's going to depend entirely on what you're wearing at same time, though."

"Or not wearing?"

His stomach flipped and he inhaled deeply. "Listen, troublemaker, save the merciless exposé of my waking fantasies for the ride home, okay? You kill the emergency power and stay out of hypovolemic shock  _and_  gunfire and I'll wear anything you want me to."

"Promises, promises," his partner muttered as she stood. "Get to the terrace, hotshot. Don't die. I need you."

"Same to you," he replied. "I mean it."

Her eyes, her only feature now visible between her  _tahruyt_  and  _mulhafa_ , softened almost indiscernibly. Clint knew he was the only person alive who would ever notice and it filled him with gratitude. Why she continued to put up with him and even let him get that close, he really had no idea.

"Go, go!" he shooshed softly at her, scanning their corner of the garden for guards. "Don't keep me waiting."

Wordlessly, her eyes flashed, and she was gone. He exhaled slowly as he tried to center himself before looking around for a reasonable place to hide his duffel bag. He felt like he needed a PAUSE button for his imagination. It had been easier to handle when he never believed any of it could become reality. Now there was... possibility. He wasn't sure what scared him more now: that he and Tasha might never happen, or that they  _could_. It was downright terrifying.

* * *

**Chapter 14 - Tandem**

* * *

A sweet smile and a lie about losing a bracelet somewhere was all it took for Natasha to regain entrance to the  _Riad Mimoun_. As convenient as it was now, she could foresee weeks of paperwork and consultations in her future once their mission report hit the council's desk. She groaned inwardly. There was something to be said for shimmying up a drain pipe by necessity.

She earned a few strange looks from retinue soldiers on the main floor as she scurried past, eyes downcast on her search for the non-existent piece of jewelry. None of them so much as questioned her. She started idly counting them as she went by thinking, "And  _you're_  gonna get your pay docked next week... and you... and you..."

She had to make a couple of diversionary detours before she was able locate and sneak unnoticed into the cramped systems control room, surprising a single operative at the computer. She quickly choked him unconscious and dragged him away from the monitors. Pulling off her layers of local garb, she sat down in the swivel chair and went to work. Within minutes, she had plunged the  _Riad_ into complete darkness, silenced their security systems, jammed radio signals and derailed their communications network. She slipped out of the control room into the black, relying on her enhanced night vision and the general confusion within the safe house. Most of the guards had donned NVDs to see in the darkness but they were still disorganized and fairly easy to bypass. Natasha crept upstairs and made her way to the west terrace.

Her heart rate accelerated just slightly as she caught herself pausing by the patio doors. Hawkeye wasn't on the terrace but she wasn't concerned; she could feel him watching her from wherever he was hiding. The very edges of her lips curled into a smile and she slowly scanned the surroundings. Despite her sharp eyes, it still took her a minute.

"Okay, seriously, how did you get  _that_ high up a tree with hardly any branches?" she whispered in an impressed tone, her hands planted on her hips.

Seemingly out of nowhere, her partner dropped down directly in front of her, landing in a low  _wushu_  ground stance. He looked up and winked at her. "Trade secret, Widow."

"Hmph," she muttered. He stood up smoothly, barely inches from her body, and she could feel the heat radiating off of him. His face was smug and made silver by the desert moonlight, and despite a piece of unidentified vegetation clinging to his head, Natasha genuinely wondered if he'd ever been so handsome. Realizing that she had stopped breathing, she deliberately reached out and pulled the stubborn leaf from his hair. "Robin Hood, hiding in the trees," she murmured close to his mouth.

His lips twitched but he remained still. "Theta protocol is a secure evac procedure," he rumbled softly by her ear. "Hunker down then bug out. Tells us they want Dodona alive."

She closed her eyes. She couldn't count the times over the years that she had comforted herself with her partner's skin; it was always warm and smelled somehow like vetiver and midnight. Even without touching it, she could breathe in and be soothed, which is what she did now. "Did Coulson have anything on Zarubin's socialist club?"

His chest had gone tight. "Mmhmm. It matches up with an unidentified outfit out of Hamburg, so you're getting bonus points for tagging them before Intel."

"Do I get a prize?"

"Maybe," Clint whispered. He lightly brushed his nose across the side of her jaw and grinned when she shivered. "How good are you,  _really_ , though? Good enough to get us in to the locked safe room where Dodona is and convince him that his security chief of six years wants to kidnap him to Germany?"

She reluctantly pulled back, taking a deep breath of his warm vetiver aura to keep with her. "Just watch me, hotshot. I'll have that door open, the counsellor in thrall and the Quinjet warmed up before you can say ' _паховая связка_ ' ."

He frowned. "Pakhob... err... what? I thought my Russian was decent, but I have no idea what that means."

"That's okay," she replied with a sly grin as she tugged playfully on his tactical vest straps. "I do and I'll show you later. Let's go, Barton. Mind on the mission, yeah?"

He stared at her back for several beats when she turned and walked away.  _Breathe, Clint_ , he had to remind himself.  _Breathe_.

* * *

The moment when the counsellor's security detail concluded they were under attack and not simply suffering from electrical issues had finally arrived, and the assassins were forced to fight much their way back down to the main floor. They moved back-to-back, stepping in unison, his keen eyes and her enhanced vision complementing each other perfectly. His punches were matched with her low kicks, each of her spins unconsciously timed with his sliding changes of stance. Timo's troops were completely unprepared for the silent duo and were quickly neutralized without a single bullet or arrow fired.

As the last man fell, Natasha's breathing was heavy and her lungs screamed in pain. She clutched unintentionally at her ribs and scowled.

Fear shot through Clint. "Nat," he exclaimed, reaching for her elbows and steadying her. "Whoa, are you okay?"

"I'm just peachy," she replied, listening to the rattle in her lungs with a wince. "Maybe that last stepover kick was a bit overboard."

His face clouded, and he reached for her zipper. He paused, meeting her eyes for permission, and she nodded slightly. He pulled her suit open and gingerly probed at the bandages across her chest. She hissed in pain and he pulled his hand back to look at it. It was covered with blood.

Slowly, he pulled her zipper back up, and laid his palm flat over the top of it. Neither of them said a word for several moments, each of them struggling with the situation. Eventually, his ragged voice broke the silence.

"If you... you start to bleed out... that's what I said before," he stammered, unable to meet her eyes.

"Don't do this to me, Clint," she countered with her voice breaking. His fingers tightened over her collar bones. "You need me to open that door and..."

"I need you alive," he interrupted brusquely, looking up at her. His grey eyes looked like a storm brewing. "I can get the door open."

She didn't move, didn't say a word, as he pulled his hand away and swiped his thumb through her blood on his fingers. He stared at it as though hypnotized, eventually folding his hand into a fist.

"We... we stay together," he whispered haltingly. "If you think... if you're okay... Natasha... Oh God, if I lose you now..." his voice closed over and trailed off, unable to find the words to serve him.

In the darkness, she was ghostly pale, but he could see her eyes shining with tears. "Is that the right decision?" he asked her painfully. "Tash... I'm not sure anymore."

"I'm sure of only two things," she whispered back, reaching out to push some of his tousled hair from his brow. "One is that you are the best man I've ever known, and the other is that we need to stay together. Even like this, Clint. We're still stronger like this than we are apart. I'm gonna be all right and we'll finish this and go home and talk about everything we need to talk about, okay?"

He unclenched his bloody fist and gave her a long, appraising look before melting into a boyish smile that made her heart pound. "Hey, Nat?"

"Yeah?"

"Keep me from fucking this up, okay? This... this whatever it is."

"I promise."

"Good. Then let's go rescue a counsellor."

* * *

**Chapter 15 - Personal Spaces**

* * *

Beyond the large wooden doors Natasha had listened through earlier in the evening was a large and sumptuous dining room. It was lit by several lanterns, it seemed the staff had begun setting lights out before being evacuated by security. Decorated in the traditional Moroccan style with large brass fixtures and richly-coloured upholstery, the room looked absurdly romantic.

The agents briskly crossed the room to a secure and modern door on the far side. Natasha cursed at the keypad on the wall beside it as though it had personally offended her.

"What's wrong, firecracker?" Clint asked in concern.

"Nothing I can't fix. It's a powered door, and I turned off the power. I need an arrow, one that goes zap."

He gave his partner a pained look. " _Zap?!_  You wound me, truly you do. How much 'zap' does the lady need?"

"A kilowatt or so would be nice, right about here," she tapped the base of the keypad the stepped back from the door.

Clint retrieved an arrow with a bulky head from his quiver and nocked his bow. "You lose points if I help, you know," he warned her before pulling back his bowstring.

"Wait, wait," she cried, and he paused with an eyebrow raised at her. She stepped to his side and swiftly bent under his outstretched left arm.

"Safety first!" he protested, puzzled as she squirmed into the space between his arms with a satisfied noise. "What  _are_  you doing?" Natasha nestled her back against his broad chest and raised her arms to join his, one hand on his at the bow grip and the other resting by his thumb at the string.

His throat went dry. The act was bizarrely intimate and totally unprecedented. It was something from a cheese-ball romantic comedy where the hero was trying to get into the pretty girl's pants by pretending to coach her golf swing or something equally stupid. That thought was suddenly overridden by the realization that she fit into his space perfectly, despite the distracting wiggling going on against him. He was suddenly very glad that the target was only a few feet in front of him. There was no hiding his heart trying to pound its way from his chest, she was sure to feel it.

She twisted her head to look at him, her green eyes twinkling with mischief. "So we'll shoot it together, okay...?"

He smirked at her. He was still holding the bow fully drawn, something he knew from experience he could do indefinitely. "I don't know," he drawled. "I still feel like I'm doing all the work, here. It's harder, in fact, now that I'm trying to shoot around a bratty Russian spy. Grab the bow, Tash."

She gave him a faint moue. "I can't draw your bow, Clint," she pointed out.

He leaned in and spoke softly by her ear. "Trust me." He slipped his left hand off the grip as hers slid into its place, and he closed his strong hand over hers. "Now the bowstring."

She made a small grunt as 250 pounds of draw weight rolled onto her fingers for a split second as Clint repositioned his grip over hers on the string. He helped her pull it back out, right to the corner of her mouth.

"Release," he whispered, and she did.

The arrow buried itself right up to the black fletching with a satisfying  _THWACK!_ , the keypad exploding in a shower of sparks a second later. She gave a whoop of excitement and rushed back to the door, giving it a couple of solid bashes with her hip. It grudgingly opened and she had her twin Pernachs out of their holsters before Clint could blink. He set his face grimly, collapsing his bow and reaching for the sidearm she had lent him. With a nod at her, they stepped into the safe room.

The counsellor and his security chief had been secured in a well-appointed study. This room was also rich with expensive furniture and luxurious accents. A decanter of gold cognac and two half-filled snifters sat on on a handsome thuya wood desk, the liquid still vibrating from the force of the arrow blast. The cognac stood out as the only motion left in the study.

"Shit," Clint stated flatly. Timo and the counsellor were gone.

Natasha scanned the shelves lining the room and holstered her machine pistols. She approached one of them and began poking through the books. "A secret getaway route behind the bookshelf? Really? I thought those only existed in murder mysteries."

"This  _will_  be a murder mystery if we lose Dodona, Fury will bury us in the desert." Clint did a quick patrol around the small room, pointing the Grach under the desk and behind the arm chairs. Satisfied they were clear, he tucked the gun away.

"Help me with this, Clint," his partner requested, gesturing at the large wooden shelf. "I can see the marks on the wood here where the edges crush together when it opens. There must be a latch or switch or something."

Clint walked over and ran his hand along a row of ornate tomes. "Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Nabokov... I found some light reading for you, Tash."

She snorted. "You'd love Nabokov. Excerpts from his final novel were first published in  _Playboy_ magazine, you know."

Clint paused. "Really? Are you kidding me?" He reached for Nabokov's  _Lolita_  and tried to pull the book out. Instead, it slid forward and the bookshelf popped open. Clint was clearly impressed with himself.

Natasha, however, stared at the shelf in disgust. "God, seriously?" she complained with derision. She pulled the shelf open fully and peered into the narrow passage.

"Detecting 101: always go with the lowest common denominator," her partner replied sombrely. "Guns out, firecracker," Clint instructed her, looking over her shoulder into the pitch black corridor. "I'm going in first. Cover my ass, would you?"

"When have I  _not_?" she demanded, drawing her Pernachs. "It's such a beautiful ass!"

"I think I see now why I'm always on point," he said as he pulled a small but powerful flashlight from a pocket on his tactical vest. He stepped into the passageway with Natasha chuckling behind him.

The passage was dark and angled downwards. Clint proceeded slowly, running one hand along the sandstone wall and the other steady on the Grach. The floor beneath his feet was nothing more than packed dirt and the musty smell assaulted his nostrils. Something on the ground caught his eye so he swung his light down.

"Ouch. Tread warily," he winced as he identified the small spiked objects scattered in the passage. "Those are the meanest looking jack rocks I've ever seen."

"What the hell is a… oh!" Natasha followed the beam of his flashlight. "Caltrops!" She crouched down and took a close look at one of them. "Serrated spikes. These are a Department X favourite. Zarubin is with them. Don't touch them, the tips might be poisoned."

"Oh goody," Clint replied drily. "I was wondering when things were going to get complicated!" He began slowly picking his way across the packed dirt, stopping every few yards to illuminate the path behind him for his partner.

"We don't have time for this, Clint. It's slowing us down too much." Natasha complained as she danced around the trapped floor.

"C'mere," he rumbled, holding his arm out to her. She gave him a quizzical look but put her hand in his. He pulled her flush against him and wrapped his left arm around her. Without warning her, he swiftly lifted her up, eliciting a surprised squeal from her. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and cleared her throat.

"Did… did you just squeal?" he asked in disbelief, stepping once again down the dark passage. "Like a school girl, even?"

"You squeezed me," she swatted his back lightly. "It was just the air whooshing out of my lungs."

"Oh, I see. Well whatever it was, it was pretty adorable."

"…. was it?"

"I thought so, yeah. I mean, I don't  _generally_  find squealing adorable, and to my knowledge you've never squealed before in your entire life, so I guess this is kind of a first for both of us…."

"Well hang on, you can't be sure that's true," she protested as she clung to him. The passage had taken them well underground and the air was cold and damp. "Maybe I squeal all the time."

Her partner snorted. "Sure. Like when?"

"SHIELD slumber parties. I'm the reigning pillow flight champion."

Clint laughed, and gave her a quick squeeze. "Okay now  _that_  I would believe. I'm hurt that I've never been invited, though."

"I'll make sure you're on the guest list next time, although fair warning…. you will have to enter the Pillow Arena and face me in honourable combat."

"You're on, Romanova, and you're going down." He gently lowered her back down to the ground. "Looks like Zarubin ran out of caltrops," he said, scanning around with his flashlight. "And look…. stairs. Let's see where this escape route goes."

They silently crept up the steps, leading them to a set of old wooden cellar doors. Moonlight seeped in through the cracks.

"Leads outside," Natasha murmured. "We've come a ways, though. We must be off the Riad property."

"Agreed," her partner said as he put his flashlight away and tucked the gun into his holster. "I'll open 'em, you cover 'em."

"Gotcha," she replied, training her machine pistols on the doors.

He gave her a curt nod, and gave the cellar doors a mighty push. They flew open with a crash into the starry Marrakech night. He blinked once and had Tasha's handgun back out of his holster and pointed alongside her Pernachs at the figure standing above them.

"Gospodin Zarubin," his partner breathed.

Clint's heart skipped. The Red Room had taken his partner apart one molecule at a time and played with the pieces. They could  _never_  have her again. He would die before that happened.

* * *

**Chapter 16 - Refraction**

* * *

"Natka," the ex-agent Vladimir Ruslanov Zarubin sighed, peering over the three gun barrels pointed at him. "Я просила тебя держаться подальше."  _I told you to stay away._

"Я груб американских теперь. Мы никогда не делают то, что нам говорят. Кроме того, мой раб говорит на русском," she replied curtly.  _I'm a rude American now, we never do what we are told. Also, my thrall speaks Russian._

"Hey now," Clint muttered, unsure what was going on but feeling that he had to voice an objection. "Не дави на меня, у меня был плохой день."  _Don't push me, I've had a bad day._

The old intelligence officer smiled wanly. "Very well, Mr. Barton. Yes, I know who you are now…. I asked Mr. Vanalman. He speaks very highly of you; I understand you were good friends."

Clint's face darkened. "Emphasis on 'were'. The next time I see him, I'll going to jam an arrow up his nose and make a quiver out of his large intestine."

"I'm gonna help," Natasha added with a dangerous glint in her eyes.

Zarubin clasped then spread his hands in a gesture of regret. "As I told you before, Natalia, Vanalman… he's a man of vision, but not discipline. I know that his actions have caused him great distress…."

"He's stalling us, Tash," Clint growled, moving up the stairs. Zarubin looked at the gun nervously and took several steps backward.

"Don't move, Zarubin," Natasha warned as she shoved her twin pistols towards him. "Where are they taking the counsellor?"

"Natalia…. _Котёнка…_ "

"WHERE?"

Zarubin's chin came up and a look of pride flashed across his eyes, but for a brief moment only, as Clint's fist snapped out and punched him solidly in the nose. Blood sprayed grotesquely from the older man's face while he groaned and clutched at his broken nose.

Clint grabbed Zarubin's shirt and roughly hauled him forward so that they were face to face. "Now. You. Listen. To. Me," Clint ground out, his teeth clenched with rage. "I don't need you alive. If you help us, if I shoot you now and we step over your body, it doesn't make a fucking difference to me. And secondly, if you call my partner 'kitten' ever again, I might just make that colon quiver a matching set. Am I perfectly clear?" He shook the intelligence officer in time to his final words, emphasizing his question.

Zarubin spat out a curse along with a mouthful of blood.

"I'm going to take that as a 'yes sir'," the archer snarled. "Now, do you have anything to share with me and Agent Romanoff before we rock-paper-scissors to see who gets to put a bullet in your ear?"

Zarubin shoved Clint away, his hands covered in his own blood, and turned to the redhead beside him. "Power, Natalia.  _Abusus non tollit usum_."

" _Contra principia negantem non est disputandum_ ," she tossed back at him.

Clint rolled his eyes. "Blah blah blah.  _De oppresso liber_. I have a counsellor to rescue, is anyone coming with me?" He turned the Grach pistol around in his grip and swiftly struck the old Russian across the head with it. Zarubin moaned loudly and slipped to the ground, dazed.

Natasha stared at her partner for several beats and had to scramble to catch up with him after he resolutely marched past Zarubin's body. "I didn't know you spoke Latin," she said.

"I don't. It's the motto of the Special Forces, it was right on my old insignia. I just wanted to sound cool like you." He pulled his flashlight out and looked around. "Where the hell are we, back in the Souk?"

"Smells like it," Natasha replied. The cellar doors had emptied them into a dark alley. Clint was striding purposefully towards the cross-street when she noticed one of the doors opening into the alley slowly swinging. "Clint, look. Broken lock. They went through here."

Clint pulled a second Maglite from his tactical vest and tossed it to his partner. "Get to the front, fast. Don't let him see you. Remember, you're still dead."

" _See me?!_  Please!" she scoffed. "As if." She stuck her tongue out at him before turning and disappearing soundlessly into the shadows.

"Brat," he muttered under his breath and he tried to ignore the tightening in his chest. Dammit, there she went again, doing something that was completely commonplace for them but was now tied to heartstrings he had long resisted letting her pull. He slowly eased the door open with his boot, casting his sharp eyes around the room.

It was a coppersmith's shop. Pots were stacked on the floor and hung from every available hook and beam, some of them so small they seemed useless, some as large as bathtubs. There wasn't much moonlight shining in through the dusty windows, but what little there was reflected off deeply burnished pans and mirrors, bouncing to hammered copper candle stands and oil lamps, cauldrons and kettles. For a single second, he was caught by how beautiful it all was. A mental image of Tasha's hair in the sunlight came to him, the colours were the same.

Movement near the front of the shop snapped him out of his brief reverie. His next breath had his gun out, trained on the source: a gleaming set of fireplace tools beside the front door. The copper and leather bellows softly swayed back and forth, a memory of a recent collision. The front door was open. Clint swore and launched himself through the shop, back out into the Marrakech streets.

He quickly scanned the souk. It was lit by lanterns and still thronging with people. However, he could see via the lights down the block where the power outage ended. He was certain Timo would try to keep to the darkness, so he melted into the crowd heading away from the electricity. It felt almost medieval in the market by lamplight and he itched to pull out his bow just to be poetic. Showmanship didn't usually go hand in hand with assassination, but he did grow up in the circus, after all.

Up ahead, he spotted a large, derelict building, possibly a warehouse. "Bingo!" he murmured to himself. A big empty space, plenty of exits and numerous places to hide, it would be just what Timo was looking for. Clint closed in on the building quickly and climbed effortlessly the side. He knew that the counsellor was at risk, but he was having a hard time staying cautious. There was a sizeable part of him that wanted Timo dead and even more, wanted the traitor to know he was coming for him.

A broken window on an upper floor eventually led him to his preferred over-watch position in the warehouse rafters. Less than a minute passed before his suspicion was rewarded, an irritated voice erupted from one of the empty offices before. It was Dodona.

"… sick of skulking around in the dark," the counsellor was ranting. Hawkeye silently reached for his bow and an arrow. Stepping out nervously behind the counsellor was Vanalman.

The flare of anger that exploded inside Clint when his eyes settled on his old friend came very close to forcing him scream out loud. The arrow in his right hand twisted and bent under the force of his gripped fist. Blood pounded in his ears, making them ring, drowning out whatever excuses Timo was mouthing to his superior. He tossed aside the broken arrow in disgust and drew a new one, it was nocked on his bow and aimed at Vanalman without any conscious thought.

Bile rose in Clint's throat as adrenaline churned through him. Timo was only seconds from death, seconds away from paying for his earlier actions. His blood for Natasha's, his blood to pay for hers, watching it spill out all over her body, tasting it on her lips as he frantically breathed into her mouth, his hands sinking into the wet and spongy red suction of her chest, her heartbeat faltering and then it was gone…

Natasha.

She wasn't dead. Somehow. Maybe angels didn't die, even angels of death. She wasn't dead, but climbing up walls and quoting Latin and kissing him like something out of one of his dreams and she was right… Timo was part of something bigger that they didn't understand and SHIELD needed him alive.

The bile surged up his throat again and he couldn't stop it this time. He lowered his bow, leaned over and threw up quietly beside his boots. Well. This was embarrassing. Tears were streaming down his face, the bad guy was walking away and he'd just hurled all over himself. Some superhero  _he_  was.

* * *

**Post-script Author's Notes:**

**_Abusus non tollit usum_ ** **means "misuse does not remove use", or just because something is being misused doesn't mean that it can never be used correctly.**

**_Contra principia negantem non est disputandum_ ** **means "there can be no debate with those who deny the foundations", or that you can't debate with someone when you don't agree on the basic rules or facts.**

**_De oppresso liber_ ** **means "liberate the oppressed", and is indeed the motto of the United States Army Special Forces (also known as the Green Berets).**

* * *

**Chapter 17 - Bloemfontein and Beyond**

* * *

His anger rang in his ears.

Clint ran, twelve steps along the rafters, unconcerned if his boots were too loud or the dust shook down on top of his target. His steps were punctuated by gunshots, Timo had pulled out his Beretta and was firing towards the ceiling in a wild panic. Counsellor Dodona dove for cover.

His anger rang in his ears.

Bow in hand, he jumped. Reckless, careless, he landed smoothly in front of his former friend. Timo was still shooting but Clint was oblivious. He swung his bow in a clean arc and knocked the Beretta from Timo's hand. Timo was unfazed, he pulled a knife from his belt and lashed out viciously with it. Clint twisted like an acrobat, realizing that Timo's years with the counsellor had slowed him down. He bellowed wordlessly in rage.

His anger rang in his ears.

The counsellor was yelling indistinctly in the background as the men grappled with each other. Between swings, it slowly dawned on Clint that Dodona was shouting his name as he crouched behind a dust-covered table.

"Barton! What the hell is going on? Timo! Dammit, Agent Barton!" the counsellor yelled.

"He's here to kill you! He's a traitor!" Vanalman screamed, slashing his knife along with a solid kick to Clint's thigh.

"You're the traitor!" Clint growled, spinning a kick of his own at the security chief. "Tell him about your new friends, Timo. Tell him about Vladimir Zarubin and your secret socialist clubhouse! Tell him how you  _killed my partner!"_

Clint let his rage fill him. Vanalman stumbled and Clint pressed towards him, so consumed by his anger that he noticed a heartbeat too late that Timo had faked him out. His stagger magically corrected, his feet planted firmly on the ground, as he whipped his knife around and buried it into Clint's shoulder. With his other hand, he pulled the Grach from Clint's holster. The gun echoed like thunder in the abandoned warehouse.

With a hoarse shout, Clint sank to the ground, his knee having been shot out by his former friend. Timo's face was set grimly as he pointed the gun at Clint's head.

"Timo, wait!" Counsellor Dodona shouted in an authoritative voice. "Hold your fire." He emerged from his cover and joined his chief. "I need answers."

Timo was breathing hard. "Agent Barton has been compromised," he hissed.

"Agent Barton has been shot," Dodona frowned. "I don't think he's going anywhere. Stand down, Vanalman."

Clint's eyes were filled with malice as he looked up at his former friend, as though he was daring him to shoot. Timo's held the gun steady, unmoving.

"Stand DOWN!" the counsellor repeated. "That's an order!"

Timo's face was impassive as he stared at the archer. His finger tightened on the trigger, and with an ear-splitting bang, the second shot exploded.

Counsellor Dodona let out a shocked yell and Timo crumpled to the floor with a curse. From an unseen perch, The Black Widow jumped into the fray.

With her red hair floating around her face like a furious halo of fire, she truly was an Angel of Death. Vanalman lay trembling on the concrete as he gawked at her, and bled profusely from the bullet wound in his thigh. "You're….. I…. but I…" he gasped. Natasha ignored him.

Not wasting a moment, she rushed to her partner's side and surveyed the damage with a wince. "Hold on, Clint," she murmured as her hands skimmed over his body. In addition to the knife in the back of his shoulder and the pulpy red mess where his knee had been, she found several other bullet wounds from Timo's Baretta. "Oh, you idiot," she sighed, and he gave her a weak smile.

The counsellor approached her, glancing at his security chief. "Agent Romanoff? Barton said you were dead…?"

"Briefly, I was," she replied curtly. "Thanks to your security chief. Counsellor, I respectfully request that you call in to confirm that Strike Team Delta is not a hostile force."

The counsellor shook his head. "No need, Agent Romanoff. I… well… I had a feeling. Something wasn't right with Vanalman. He's a good man, really he was…"

Pale and shaking, Clint still couldn't help but growl at Dodona's words. The counsellor crouched down at his side, and to their surprise, began to tear strips of bandages from his shirt.

"As you may recall, Agent Barton,  _you_  were my first choice for Security Chief," Dodona reminded him. He handed the lengths of cloth to Natasha and she tried to staunch the numerous flows of blood. "You turned me down flat. Timo was recommended as your closest match."

"No need to insult me while I'm down, sir," Clint protested weakly. His vision was fuzzy and he realized he was very cold. "Tash, I don't feel so hot."

She swallowed the dry lump in her throat with a nervous side-glance at the counsellor. "I'm not surprised, Barton, what the hell were you thinking? Charging into the thick of it like you were bullet-proof? You're a sniper, you jackass, not a tank. You've clearly lost your mind."

He smiled wanly, knowing perfectly well that her words were meant to hide her true feelings.  _You scared me_ , she was saying.  _You were lucky. Also, you've clearly lost your mind._

The counsellor cleared his throat. "The cavalry is coming, I assume?" he asked.

"Yes, sir. Should be here anytime, sir. They were flying a response team from Lisbon," Natasha reported.

"Good work, agents," Dodona nodded. He turned his attention to Vanalman. "Well, I suppose I'd better look at that thigh, Timo. Somehow I doubt Agent Romanoff feels like patching you up." He moved to Vanalman's side and ripped more of his shirt up for a tourniquet.

Clint tried to focus on his partner as his vision swam in and out of focus. "Tash, is Timo…. is he dead?"

She shook her head. "No. I clipped his wings, but he'll live to be interrogated."

"Damn. I know… I know they need him alive. But damn. He really deserved to die."

She slid herself underneath his back and gently pulled him into her lap on his side, trying to keep the knife in his shoulder elevated and stable. "Dying would have got him off too easy," she replied quietly. "I like it better this way. Drag him in and rake him over the coals."

Clint gave a weak chuckle. "Yeah? Maybe you're right."

"I'm always right," she replied. "This is better. Think of it this way: мы будем бросим его на съедение волкам. We're gonna throw that fucker to the wolves."

"I like the sound of that." His voice was barely a whisper so she leaned close to him as she fretted over his wounds. He raised a trembling hand up to her throat and pulled it back, covered in blood. Grimacing, he tugged her zipper down several inches and blood gushed out in alarming quantities. "We've seen better days, haven't we, firecracker?" he commented and brushed his hand along the side of her cheek.

She nodded and bowed over him until her head was on his chest, still cradling him. He grit his teeth against the pain as he threaded an arm around hers, their fingers entwined. When no space between them remained, he lost consciousness.

Natasha didn't know how long it was before Counsellor Dodona's face was hovering in front of her, his mouth moving rapidly, but if he was talking, she couldn't follow him. Other faces started to appear behind him, as well as hands, trying to prise her and Clint apart. In a panic, she reached out to Dodona.

"Counsellor, no! No!" she begged, her voice sounding very strange and muffled to her own ears. "Please! Don't let them…. don't take us apart, please."

Dodona's face was serious and he turned to the others, his mouth continuing to move soundlessly. Faces were floating about, lights were shining in her eyes and everything started to spin. The hands were still pulling at her, but now merely trying to untangle bloody limbs. She found herself laid out on the concrete floor at her partner's side, their fingers still threaded together. She watched Clint's chest moving up and down slightly while a paramedic cut off his tactical vest. Dodona had understood. It wasn't negotiable: Hawkeye and The Black Widow would not and could not be separated. Natasha smiled, and everything else slipped away.

* * *

EPILOGUE

*One Week Later*

The small, private hospital they were currently calling home was right beside King's Park, so it was obvious where they would end up on their first sanctioned outing. They took it slow, in companionable silence, until Natasha found an isolated bench surrounded by rose bushes. She pushed Clint up to it and stepped the wheelchair brake on, making sure the woolly blanket in his lap was tucked in comfortably.

"Stop fussing with it, Tash," he swatted at her hands. "I'm warm enough!"

She sat down on the park bench next to him and made a rude face, making him laugh. "I worry! I'm allowed to worry!" she retorted. "It's chillier today than I expected."

Clint beamed at her. "It's bliss! I could be chilly for the rest of my life and die a happy man."

"Let's hope I can do better to keep you a happy man than turning the thermostat down, but I'm glad you appreciate the climate. Coulson thought I was crazy when I made them transfer us to Bloemfontein… but I love the rose gardens here."

"It's a vast improvement over what I would have got us," Clint assured her. "I would have said, 'take us any place where it's winter', and I'd be having surgery in Antarctica."

"I don't think Vostok Station is known for its world class knee replacements," she agreed. She tucked an errant curl of auburn hair behind her ear and his heart clenched at the beauty of such a simple yet graceful gesture.

"So….." he began. She raised an eyebrow at him, but he didn't continue.

"Soooo….?"

"Did you really wheel me out here just for some fresh air? Or are we finally going to have The Talk?"

The corners of her mouth turned up faintly. "Well, we did sorta promise each other The Talk, didn't we? So who gets to start?"

"Ladies first," Clint replied smoothly.

"I set myself up for that," she sighed, and he nodded.

"Okay", she shrugged, putting her hands into his lap and holding them open until he placed his hands in hers. She ran her thumbs over the callouses and smiled at how comforting she found the rough skin. They sat in silence for several moments before she looked up at him, her eyes glistening with tears. "I love you," she said simply.

He stared at her, absolutely unable to speak. His heart had taken off like a jackrabbit, his stomach had twisted into a knot and his train of thought had completely derailed. He blinked several times but was unable to reboot his brain.

Natasha looked back their hands and the tears began to slip down her cheeks. She exhaled loudly. "So yeah," her voice cracked. "I know that you… umm… you had concerns about judgment calls… in the field. So I understand if you want me reassigned…. or… umm… well… whatever…" she trailed off into silence, unable to meet his gaze.

With what felt like every erg of energy he could conjure, Clint managed to squawk out a choking sound, and he clutched at his partner's hands. Alarmed, her attention flew to his face and she grabbed at his wrist to check his pulse.

"Oh my God, Clint, what's wrong? Can you breath?" She was half off from the bench when he tried to pull her back down. He attempted what he hoped was a reassuring hand-squeeze but the resulting look on her face suggested she thought he was having a seizure instead. The impossibility of their predicament set him to laughing, and his senses finally jerked back online.

"Oh babe, I'm fine, I'm fine, it's okay," he wheezed. "I'm sorry, I'm not trying to scare you. It's just that you… I think you overloaded my brain. I don't know what I was expecting you to say, but that definitely was  _not_  it."

She gasped and wiped the tears from her cheeks. "Holy shit, I thought I'd killed you. Again."

"Come here," he tugged at her and she slid onto his lap reluctantly. He wrapped his arms around her and laid his head against her chest, comforting himself with her steady heartbeat. "I thought The Talk was going to be much more complicated than that," he admitted. "And I know your opinion about love and all that. Shit, Tasha… I'm dreaming again, right? God, that sounds so corny."

"You're so dense sometimes, Clint," she murmured into his hair. "And here I thought I was going to make it nice and simple to understand. We're not the kind of people who beat around the bush, hotshot. If you want to agonize over your feelings then I'll listen, of course… but I just wanted my piece to be clear. I love you, the whole package, and if you're okay with that, I promise to be your partner by whatever definition you want me. My offer is completely straightforward."

"Your… offer?"

"Yeah.  _Me_. That's the offer. Take it or leave it, Barton."

"I'm taking it," he responded instantly, hugging her fiercely. "I'm taking it, I'm taking it. All of it."

She released the breath she hadn't realized she was holding, and he looked up at her in amusement. "Don't say a goddamn word, Barton," she warned him. "Or I will kick your ass…."

"I love you too," he interrupted with a grin.

"…all the way to…. okay, well, I guess you can say that. Well-played," she said with her eyes narrowing. "Are you gonna kiss me or what, here?"

He tilted his chin up to her with a cheeky boyish grin, and her stomach did flips. She lowered her head down with her lips hovering right above his. "Oh, I see, so once again, it's up to me?"

"Come on, Romanova," he breathed. "I'm the sniper. Aren't you  _supposed_  to handle things in close quarters?"

"Mmmhhmmm," she purred. She flicked her tongue across his lips and her pulse raced when he growled in response. "I'd better handle this, then. And the next time. And the next time. And the nex…."

His lips crashed impatiently into hers. Their kiss lingered, unhampered by danger for the first time. When they broke apart, he took her face into his hands in adoration and she shivered unavoidably with desire.

"Are you cold, Agent Romanoff?" he asked softly.

"I like being chilly," she replied. "I got my partner to keep me warm."

"Lucky bastard. I hope he doesn't fuck it up."

"He won't," she smiled against his hands. "I promised I wouldn't let him…. and I'm a girl who keeps her promises. You ready to go back inside, champ?"

"Yeah," he answered, giving her a quick kiss before letting her slip out of his lap. "Let's do one more tour of the park first, though, okay? I want you good and cold before we head back to the clinic."

She rolled her eyes and disengaged the wheelchair brakes. "So romantic!"

"I know," he responded with a happy sigh. "I can't help it.  _My_  partner is pretty much the most desirable thing ever."

She squeezed his uninjured shoulder affectionately. "Lucky man."

"And I know it. Always have, always will. Luckiest fool alive."

 


End file.
